YouTube algorithm is cruel

[lethargytartare]

Love the tune! I wonder if that particular song is hurt by the song name, your band name, and similarity to Sabbath's:
Into the Void by Black Snappers
Into the Void by Black Sabbath
Thinking as a programmer, I wonder if that leads to a proportion of quick departures (visitors thinking it will be the sabbath song, and leaving when they find it isn't) and that pattern demotes your ranking?

A lot of very good insights in the foregoing responses too!

 

[DamirDart]

Hey I started a YouTube channel recently so I'm trying to learn more too. Have you tried using hashtags? I use #doublebass #doublebassist etc for my shorts. Good luck and have fun!

Hi @bassbass2024 , yes. With our latest Short we tried hashtags. But, what seems to be helping the most is what @Pocket Dave suggested - asking people directly for support. We did this with the new Short:

We have now direct +4 subscribers for this single Short, what didn't happened before. But, what's more interesting is this:

Our other three shorts had an initial steep boost of views till 500 and then almost nothing was happening after that. With the graph above I can observe two interesting things - the curve looks different, but first and foremost the engagement changed. In other Shorts we had like 30% people watching the Shorts and 70% swiping away. Now we have 60% people watching compared to 40% of swipers. Of course we are talking here about too small batches of data to be statistically relevant, but this is what our small amount of data is trying to tell us. I guess

This curve change leaves me hoping that we will not hit the 500-view-wall and that the Short will still appear in people's feeds.

BTW: I am talking here about this new YouTube Short I posted after starting this thread:

Endless Road YouTube Short by black snappers from Munich, Germany

 

[DamirDart]

Love the tune! I wonder if that particular song is hurt by the song name, your band name, and similarity to Sabbath's:
Into the Void by Black Snappers
Into the Void by Black Sabbath
Thinking as a programmer, I wonder if that leads to a proportion of quick departures (visitors thinking it will be the sabbath song, and leaving when they find it isn't) and that pattern demotes your ranking?

A lot of very good insights in the foregoing responses too!

Thank you! And big thanks to all my bass brothers and sisters here. I started this thread with 27 subscribers and now we are at 36! What an amazing boost of 33.3%

 

[DamirDart]

Into the Void by Black Snappers
Into the Void by Black Sabbath

Haha. I didn't even know that. Well, a bit of (unintentional) controversy should be fine, I guess…

 

[hrodbert696]

Not experienced at this, but what I understand about algorithms is that they're designed to make money for Youtube. That means advertising money, and advertisers pay for attention. So the algorithm will push any content that gets more eyeballs on it for longer periods of time, and that gets more engagement - likes, comments, shares - because that suggests the customer is in a more receptive state of mind to the ads. Based on that, I'd say that if more algorithm-enhanced exposure is the goal, you need to...

1) have an instant attention-grabber so people don't scroll past or click away in the first couple of seconds...
2) have a narrative to it that makes them wonder what's coming next...
3) trigger discussion, say with questions or staking claims to be debated...
4) shamelessly ask people to engage - "if you liked this video, click like, share, and subscribe!"

And, as others have said, put more content on your channel. Algorithms don't know what you content actually IS; they just know how people engage with it. They use that data to say, "If you liked this, you'll also like that," based on the behavior of other users. One of the obvious things "you'll also like" are more videos by the same creator, so you need to have something there for them them click to.