Seeking Advice A strategy change. Trying to appeal to a wider audience.

[Ceorge_Christofi]

I have been studying my figures for retention and audience. I would like to grow my audience into a direction that younger viewers.. (read under 30 for younger) might go for. At the moment. my videos get few views generally but the retention sits at between 40 and 60% on average.

According to youtube, nobody under 30 views my videos and no women at all. This must be complete bulls... because my youngest daughter (18) has watched this video and said it was a much better watch than some of my similar videos.

So what am I asking? First, if you can spend 10 mins watching this video then give me some honest ideas if this is better for teenagers to middle agers like me. I tried to go shorter than usual, added humour and memes and generally tried to make it appealing. If you can't make 10 minutes then thats fine, just let me know why you decided to click out.

I'll say in advance, what the video contains is a 65 year old vintage radio that is in the first stage of fixing and restoration. I know it isn't dead bodies in trees or fortnight walkthrough, but this is my niche. I play electronics, vintage and new.

 

[Photoguy]

I might have an idea about your situation. In the beginning you should quickly, even right away add some sort of "hook". Like showing before or after footage, or maybe you show a shot of you about to see if the radio works or not. It will be a "cliffhanger" that will hook the younger audience which doesn't have much patience.

 

[Ceorge_Christofi]

Hmm. Something I have thought about but in the series it would be almost impossible unless I filmed the whole repair as one then released it.

At the moment I work on the first part, edit and release then work on the next part. I know I should have footage ready but the truth of the job is that a 10 minute video is probably a good 5 hours of work before editing and a real work time of up to 20 hours.

I did have intros for a while but found that while binge watching a series they would get really annoying when watching other people's content so dropped them from my own so the flow from one to the next is better.

I have started dropping Easter eggs into videos to see the reaction from the audience.

Like you say, younger people seem to have the attention span of a flea on speed so unless it's naked ladies I'm not sure exactly how to hook in the youth audience when talking about old radios and technical stuff.

 

[Damon]

Your voice is magic. I'm still watching the video. Check out Fran Blanche. She's an older lady who does older electronic equipment and science experiments. She's managed to amass 88k subs, and has had successful channel. You might pick up a few things from her channel and what she's doing.: https://www.youtube.com/user/ContourCorsets

 

[Ceorge_Christofi]

I actually subscribe to Fran and used to enjoy her stuff but with the recent forced move, crowdfund and general moaning I have lost some interest. Her content is still good, especially the older stuff. If you are interested in watching longer content about fixing old radios, there is a guy, Jim Lindenas who regularly makes hour long rambles. That guy actually has a really smooth voice and is just so relaxed in his delivery. I can't listen to him in bed on my tablet because he is too relaxing, i end up dropping the tablet and getting woken up by the earbuds being pulled out as the tablet falls.

As for my voice... its my radio presenter one! Having worked in radio and having my own show for a while you tend to pick up on audio failings quite a bit. My goal was to make my audio stand out as something easy to listen to, giving a relaxed feel but perfectly clear, even with my North West London accent. It is the one thing that I really find irritating when I see great video let down by poor audio or if the creator feels the need to speak at 300 miles an hour like they are holding a livestock auction. If you want to create content to give information, people have to hear what you are saying otherwise you might as well shout into a pillow.

I have actually finished and uploaded part 3 of the 1950's radio and TB is scheduled to make it public at 2am GMT (zulu time or UTC).

 

[Damon]

I agree about Fran's channel. The groaning and complaining about having to monetize her channel. YouTube has clearly pushed her channel well, but not wanting to monetize, well, I don't think that's fair to YouTube given all they do for us not having to pay for bandwidth and such.