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Right Angle: Backstage (01-25-2022)

In a Eureka moment, Bill breaks the mystical code of YouTube algorithms.

Right Angle: Backstage (01-25-2022)

In a Eureka moment, Bill breaks the mystical code of YouTube algorithms.

https://youtu.be/M-_LrrA8kY0

65 replies on “Right Angle: Backstage (01-25-2022)”

Bill. Although I’m not a YT expert, I AM a marketing expert… If you change both the headline AND the thumbnail, you don’t know WHICH had the effect…change ONE THING at a time!

Wise advice, Bart. We don’t yet have a proper testing regimen to evaluate these isolated factors. Consider this a baby step into some already-tested, widely-accepted methods. Enhancing the response afterward will require some careful A/B split testing.

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Some things to consider: Children are not homogeneously intelligent and industrious (for whatever reasons). Therefore, rating teachers according to how well their students do on standardized tests makes some teachers punching bags while others are turned into windfall lottery winners. Teachers are now forced into teaching NOTHING but the answers to standardized tests. Further, my retired teacher wife had to deal (literally) with students throwing desks across the room, being sent to the office, and being returned to the classroom MINUTES later. Making a teacher responsible for keeping order while giving them NO authority or tools to maintain the peace makes that teacher a punching bag also (again, sometimes literally).

HOPEFULLY, your question is based on the realization that teachers (not their unions) face massive problems in the classrooms that they (and their profession) had NO part in creating.
Back before there was a Dept. of (Dis)Education, school principals used to come in randomly, and observe the teachers several times per year. Of course, back then, parents actually parented their children. When the kid got a bad grade, the kid was held accountable for his own failings. Nowadays, the teacher is held accountable for the kid’s failings, because “my little darling could NEVER do badly in class unless it was somebody ELSE’S fault…. MUST be the teacher’s fault.”
The previous system I just described may not have been perfect, but it was OBVIOUSLY superior to what’s going on now. Otherwise, America’s student rankings in the world would not continue to plummet. The problem is far broader than teacher evaluations, however. Our societal culture must return to the ethic of personal responsibility or our nation’s demise remains sealed.

So not really an answer, are you saying no evaluation of teachers? Personal responsibility is a good thing but there are a large number of objectively and in many cases intentionally awful teachers these days.

If you’re not going to read my previous response, giving another is a waste of time.

I agree rating teachers solely by standardized tests is counter productive, I would like to hear how you would like to rate their performance because many teachers I had just sucked and they only remained because they’re impossible to fire.

Teachers (not their unions) face massive problems in the classrooms that they (and their profession) had NO part in creating.
Back before there was a Dept. of (Dis)Education, school principals used to come in randomly, and observe the teachers several times per year. Of course, back then, parents actually parented their children. When the kid got a bad grade, the kid was held accountable for his own failings. Nowadays, the teacher is held accountable for the kid’s failings, because “my little darling could NEVER do badly in class unless it was somebody ELSE’S fault…. MUST be the teacher’s fault.”
The previous system I just described may not have been perfect, but it was OBVIOUSLY superior to what’s going on now. Otherwise, America’s student rankings in the world would not continue to plummet. The problem is far broader than teacher evaluations, however. Our societal culture must return to the ethic of personal responsibility or our nation’s demise remains sealed.

and bring back the paddle for a good SWAT! That’s what we got. It takes only one time, just that one swat for most kids. Including me.

AMEN!! (And sometimes, it needs to be used on the parents who have turned their children into delinquent, disrespectful, monsters.)

If any of the guys happen to read this I have a real world example you can learn from in just a few videos.
Scotty Kilmer is a master at click-bait that works and keeps people coming back. Some of the titles I smile at because I know he is going overboard but I still watch all his videos.
Guys look at his channel.
I think his videos are well past a billion views and he gets usually 30,000 views in the first couple of hours.
He is who I would learn from.
The best way to be successful at something is to learn from the people who are already successful at what you want to do.

I love Scotty and learn a bunch of “How To’s” from him. He one of the coolest cats on the block!

I’m a big Scotty Kilmer fan and a shade-tree mechanic. He’s helped me out of numerous automotive puzzles. Good suggestion, Alec.

I’ve been thinking about your marketing troubles for a long time. I find your content extremely valuable (especially Right Angle), and it pains me to see you lack exposure. Your viewership should easily be similar to Michael Knowles or Andrew Klavan over at DW or Dan Bongino.
I see in your model some of the things I’ve done myself with my own projects (such as my webcomic) that keep me “small potatoes.”
First is a kludgy, DIY system for publishing content and getting it out there. Scott is doing Yeoman’s work with the website and whatnot, but there are undoubtedly things he’s missing, and a lot of what he’s learning to do is “reinventing the wheel.” Even publishing through YouTube, I’m sure there are tricks for headline writing and search engine optimization (SEO) that are either getting missed entirely or are not nearly as effective as they could be. It may even be things like who you follow with your own channel and what comments you leave on other videos that may tickle the algorithm in certain ways.
Second is a quasi-sentimental attachment to the way you’ve been doing things which can make a re-visioning of system components seem daunting or which you are prompted to avoid. In my webcomic, I know it’s a problem, but I barely have time to produce it anymore, and I don’t have anything earth-shattering to say.
It’s just a little hobby for me, so if I’m overly attached to doing my layouts on Microsoft Word, self-publishing on WordPress using a template that probably could be better, and not worrying about SEO at all (as opposed to redoing everything in a comic software program, publishing on WebToons, and actually worrying about tags and keywords), it’s not that big of a deal. For you, it seems, it is a big deal.
It might be worth reaching out to your friend, Klavan, and seeing if he can’t arrange a little sit-down with Scott or yourself and whoever is doing all that stuff for Daily Wire as a full-time job. He or she may be able to see what you’re currently doing and offer you some helpful advice that would allow Scott to read six fewer books and maybe take a few months or years off the learning curve. Sometimes, there’s some simple stuff you don’t even know is a thing that actually can make all the difference.

Stephen Crowder did extensive experimentation on things such as Like, subscribe, and comment, to see what made a difference in Youtube’s algorithms (and aid in his lawsuit). May be worth reaching out to him to find out what the best results are.

Bill, the “homeschool franchise” idea you have already exists. There are companies and co-ops that will help by providing materials and lesson plans and whatever else you need (and as much or as little of it as you do).

There is a YouTuber called Wranglerstar. He does clickbait thumbnails that are right at the edge. For example the other day his title was “sham on the man that did this to me” and the thumbnail was him looking pissed with the text “I can’t believe this” on it. It was a video about him rewiring his campaign trailer be the original job was subpar. His regular and loyal viewers know he does this and understands and don’t complain about the Clickbait nature of his thumbnails. And his thumbnails gets him more traffic.

I like Wranglerstar but I actively avoid his clickbait titles because he usually buries the lead.

Wranglerstar taught me how to start a fire in the wood stove from the top of the pile, after he learned from someone else. I’ve been doing it like he said ever since.

It is curious. Scott keeps distancing himself further and further from my line of thinking.
It seems like everything is a coincidence or not intentional. I just do not agree with this line of thought.
Keep up the good work gentlemen.

Dan Bongino gets permanently banned from BlueTube, just after he posted a short video on Bongino Report called “Why I’m Leaving YouTube”. lol

In Texas they do have something like what Bill is speaking about for Homeschooling famillies. We graduated our children from homeschool. It was the best choice we ever made. In Texas, we have co-ops for homeschooling. It’s where all the parents come together one day a week and each parent teaches classes in which they are gifted. We had nurses teaching Biology and Physicists teaching Physics, etc… It was wonderful!!

Re: Bill’s mention of Neville Chamberlain, the Netflix production Edge Of War, I don’t know if it’s fact or fiction but it posits at the end that Chamberlain knew Hitler’s intentions but also that Britain was not ready for war in 1938 so he went ahead with the Peace in Our Time business knowing he would be thought a fool but in order to give GB an addition year to prepare for the war. It’s an interesting theory.

A friend of mine who has read widely and deeply about the events of 1938-1940 around Appeasement and the early conduct of the war tends towards that view.

RE: Bill’s Show and Tell… It reminded me of Rocky and Bullwinkle episodes that always ended with a “tease” for the next episode promising something that never happened. I watched just to see what was going to happen in the next episode knowing that the tease was a complete lie

Oh geez, another Rocky and Bullwinkle fan. I’m originally from Minnesota ….
My callsign in the military was “Frostbite”. After Frostbite Falls, MN. Where Moose and Squirrel were from.

Experiment? Strong yes!

Bill, I made a similar point to you years ago, but I don’t know if you ever saw it. And that point is: Don’t preach to the choir — reach out to those still outside the church. All your video series (and I’ve been a member/follower for eons) have appealed to the people who are *already your audience*. With the flamethrower, etc., all of the people who already watch you say “Yeaaahhhh!” but it might be off-putting to people who otherwise might be receptive to our message. Don’t change the message; change the packaging. Where have I heard that before? Oh, right: Iconography!

I’m thinking in particular of your What We Believe series about the Tea Party. I think if you delivered the same message but without the flames at the beginning, it might appeal to more people. Same message, different packaging. I personally thought the flame graphic was cool, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that I was already on board. If we’re gonna change things, we need to bring more people in to hear our message.

Re:
CERBERUS: How Natural Enemies Cooperate to Control Your Power, Money and Information
I got the connection between Cerberus* (or as we use it in IT — “Kerberos” the network authentication protocol) being a three headed dog and the three conjunctions of a Venn Diagram intersecting Big Business, Big Government and Big Media but …

I’m a bit weird too. I’m more than willing to say that maybe making videos with thumbnails and titles that weird people like me get isn’t the most advantageous marketing ploy. I’ll give up and miss the “inside joke” if it reaches more people and does more good.

*(You misspelled “clinical” in the video description too. Just sayin’.)

Fixed the spelling mistake. Thanks, ACTS (TM). As for the headline, I wrangled to make the connection explicit…but it could be better, with more of a curiosity factor. Thanks for the insight.

You’re being too elegant and intellectual, which makes you as weird as me 🙂

You’re right, it was explicit. It made perfect sense and it was obvious. It was intelligent, clever, witty and appropriate to the video.

That’s the problem.

The thing is, it’s not all that easy to come up with something that is going to have a broader appeal, and you’re working on a deadline.

Maybe keep the nice graphic but change the title to something like …

“Warning! Beware of Dog!”

Then put the title you did use as the first line of the video description.

Or scrap the whole thing and make a graphic of three full moons overlapping in a Venn Diagram with a little sad emoji 🙁 in the blackened interstice where they meet. Title it …

“The Forces Eclipsing Your Life”

Then republish it to YouTube as a separate video under that title and compare the results as a test.

Bill’s right, it was a great video presenting a solid case and something a lot of people really need to see.

I’m just spitballing from the hip in a blindfold here but I do think you guys are on to something. If you study what makes a YouTube channel successful and prominent then apply that to your channel within the bounds of decency and with reasonable truth then the results should show an increase in reach.

It’s all about reach.

We’re supporting you (myself minimally and I humbly admit I have no foundation to make demands or suggestions) and we get two things from that. This site, which I really love and has sort of become my online home where I have met some truly sterling people and … Reach.

We want you fair haired bright lads to spread the word. Good and hard.

I missed it too along with thousands of others, I must be that we don’t read the headline very closely , the picture tells the story.

Also, you just demonstrated that headline writing and tags are not a solo job; use the three of you to throw out and improve the ideas.
Release the train one again.

Bill – if you are actually going to experiment, you have to only change the thumbnail and title. Otherwise you run the risk of getting bad data.
Go for it, we don’t need to be an exclusive club.

I don’t mind if we’re an exclusive club. As long as we’re a really, really big exclusive club that moves American politics back to the Right. 🙂

Bill your references are as obscure as a Dennis Miller reference, whose content I also enjoy immensely, but seriously go for it Bill. Anything you need to do to drive up viewership is fine, still going to be a member tomorrow.

*Cocking back rant trigger, loading rant bullets, aiming rant cannon*

Go ahead. Make my day. 🙂

I always dislike the word clickbait when it comes to titles where it actually describes what the person did in the video. Just because the title is interesting or catches the eye doesn’t mean that it is clickbait, as long as you are not lying to your audience. “I threw a basketball off a dam” is a perfectly reasonable title for that video in my opinion since that is exactly what the person who made the video did, he threw a basketball off a dam.
Being strategic (but still honest) in naming your videos is never clickbait.

I think there’s also a growing segment of the internet-viewing population that is like Scott, going out of their way to avoid the obvious clickbait attempts. We’ve become hardened to resist that pull to see something shocking or exciting. In that case, someone might intentionally look for what you describe, so I think it’s worthwhile to continue the experiment with that in mind..

To me, “clickbait” only applies to web sites that do not live up to the title. The problem is that most of the time you can’t tell clickbait sites from regular sites that use over-the-top (but accurate) titles until you actually click.

Love this kind of strategic discussions and behind the scene contents. Go ahead and try different titles on your videos, to improve viewership. But expand the concept beyond this.

The first bit of the opening is what I tune in for because that is where we learn more about each of you. It is like an unscripted “Men of a certain age”. The very fact that you are discussing ways to improve the outreach is encouraging. Scott start paying attention Fauci is at the nexus of more than you know. Bill look up Juan Browne ‘Blancolirio and contact him.

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