Hi, I'm Sarah. I'm a gaming strategist here at YouTube
and today we're doing a channel check-up with Alyce from the channel Alaska.
So, Alyce, can you tell us a little bit more about your channel
and what type of content you make?
So, my channel's currently about gaming, and I mostly do gaming walkthroughs
that are around 40-minute to one-hour-long episodes.
Sometimes I throw in a review or a gaming blog
where I go to gaming conventions, like E3 and gamescom.
Cool. So, do you have any particular goals
or things you're aiming to accomplish with the channel, right now?
I feel like my two main goals, currently
are definitely to appeal to a broader audience
and my second is to, at some point in the future, have a complete channel rebrand.
Awesome! We can definitely talk about that.
Do you have any strategies when it comes to writing your titles?
With my titles I always want to include the game
and the part of the series, in case people want to search for a certain part
if they've finished watching part 16, and they want to find part 17.
So I include that in there.
So that's great. One of the things you've done well in the past is
looking at your Monster Hunter series
the first episode of that you have a really broadly appealing title
which is: 'This is my new favourite game', I think.
- Yeah. - Right?
So I, as someone who doesn't play that game, wouldn't necessarily
need to know anything about the game to want to click on the video.
I know it's going to give me some level of intro about the game
I'm going to get your opinion.
For your highlights, lean more into those broadly appealing titles.
And I would also say, for your episode one
also try to lean more into those broadly appealing titles.
The other thing I'm happy you said, is you included the game title
which sometimes people forget to do.
And the reason this is really important
is we will tag that game alongside your content.
So the cool thing about it for you, as a creator
is, if I'm really interested, as as viewer, in this game
I can find the game page and, potentially, find your content from this game page.
I had no idea that existed.
Yeah, so it's a great thing; it's super easy to discover content this way
and to discover new creators.
So, just making sure that you have some level of titling around the game in there
or even if it's in your description
it's enough for it to be picked up by the system.
- Okay, cool. - Yeah.
So, tell me a little bit about your thumbnail strategy, right now.
Honestly, my thumbnail strategy has varied so much through my time on YouTube
because I've just, obviously, tried different styles
realised it hasn't worked, and then gone to something else.
So I've tried to make mine stand out a bit more
where I've cut out the main focus of the game and put a highlight around it
and made my image of myself bigger without seeming like I have an ego.
It's the perfect balance, right?
So I think that's a really good point, and I think you do a really great job at
having a consistent theme across your thumbnails.
And that's something we definitely recommend.
There're two ways to think about it, especially in the gaming space.
It's thinking about having consistent branding in your thumbnails
across your series.
Also, doing it among games: so my thumbnails for Bioshock
are going to look very different from my thumbnails for Sekiro.
And you do have those similar themes there.
But, the one thing that also tends to come up a lot in gaming, is
it's really easy to have a thumbnail that is overwhelming.
Any thumbnail you're making, take it and shrink it down really, really small
and see if it's still visually appealing, and it's still clickable.
Even in the gaming space, we see most viewers are watching on mobile devices.
So, although these thumbnails look great to us on desktop...
Yeah, on Photoshop when they're huge!
We want to make sure that those are also going to look good
when I'm sitting on a bus, scrolling through on my phone.
Yeah.
So the next thing we want to jump into, is we want to take a peek at your analytics
and look a little bit more into click-through rate.
So, do you know what click-through rate is and do you ever look at it?
No, I've never really been on this page, so, no.
Okay, cool. So, what we're going to look at is
we're going into the 'Reach Viewers' tab of your analytics
and we're going to look at click-through rate.
What click-through rate is, is it's showing you, essentially,
the amount of people that are clicking on your video
after they've been exposed to the thumbnail
whether that's on search, or on suggested, or in their subscription feed.
And click-through rate does a lot of great things.
One, it tells us a lot about how appealing a video is.
So, if we come in here, if we click on this, we click on 'See More'
it's going to give us a list of your videos
with their associated click-through rate.
Use high click-through rates as an idea of:
'These are appealing videos from both thumbnails and title perspectives'.
When you're looking at this too, kind of vibe out your baseline.
So, when we were on your main page, we saw that
your click-through rate for the last 90 days was about four percent.
So, as you're refining your titling and your thumbnail strategy
see if your have videos that really exceed that normal baseline for you.
And, when you do, look into that and see: 'What did I do well here
that really resonated with an audience and made them click through?'
So, your channel name, are you trying to rebrand there as well?
Yeah, completely. I rebranded around eight months ago.
My channel name was just my normal name
and I felt like, in the gaming community, you need to have a nickname
- It's pretty standard. - ...to be well known
like a catchy one, that people could easily mention to their friends.
So, I changed to Alaska. I didn't really think about it
because, obviously, Alaska is a state.
So, obviously, trying to find me in the search bar
is going to be more difficult than someone with a really unique name.
So I think I definitely want to change my channel name.
Okay. Totally fine.
That happens a lot with creators, especially in the gaming space.
There's this tendency to make your gamer tag your channel name.
And then you grow up for ten years and you're like, "What have I done?"
Yes, that's what I'm scared of!
"I've made a terrible mistake!"
So, do you have an idea of what you're thinking, name wise?
I don't want to change it too much because when you completely change your name
then your search might go down completely, and you have to build it all over again.
So, I was going to change it to Alyska
which is a mix of my first name and the current channel name.
Yeah, I like that. That's a good one.
So, the reason I like that is, oftentimes
when you're making a big channel name change like that
the main concern is it's going to confuse your viewers
they're going to log on one day, like: "Who is this person? What's this content?"
That's what happened last time. They were like, "What?!"
"Who have you become?"
So, what is nice about that name is it's not that different from your actual name
so you're not going to worry too much about alienating your audience.
That being said, definitely let them know that it's coming.
Through a video, or community tab?
I would say a mix, totally a mix. So, a community tab's a great one to do.
Mentioning it in some of your upcoming videos is also a good thing to do.
Just get them in on what's going on
and make them feel like they're a part of the change.
But, if you're making a really big change, like from Alaska to Wyoming or something
in the interim, as you're making that branding transition
have both names that live on the channel.
And then, after a couple of months, get rid of the other one.
That way it's not as much of a shock.
I don't think that's as necessary in this case, because it is so similar.
Okay, I guess you're right.
So, it looks like right now you're uploading mostly walkthroughs.
Is that something you want to continue doing
or do you want to bridge out into other content as well?
I think I actually want to go through a channel rebrand at the moment
because I've been doing walkthroughs for so long
and it takes so long to get through one game.
I want to get more creative with the content I'm making.
What type of gaming content are you thinking of bridging into?
Are you thinking about more highlights, or are you thinking about how-tos, or...?
I wouldn't do how-tos, because I'm not that great at games!
But I definitely want to do game reviews.
I've done a few in the past, but these videos take so much time.
To go through all my footage, make all the points, script a whole video
it takes a lot longer than doing a walkthrough.
So I feel like it's hard to balance entertaining my current audience
and then also bringing in new people, and doing what I want to do and what I enjoy.
Yeah, absolutely.
So, have you heard anyone ever talk about the 'Hero, Hub, Help' framework?
- Yes. - You have, okay.
So, in case people don't know what that is
'Hero, Hub, Help' is a way of thinking about your content strategy.
So, Help content is going to be your content that is really searchable.
It's generally evergreen.
We then have Hub content.
For you, what that's going to be is your bread and butter, your walkthroughs.
That's what your audience is there for, and that's what they subscribe to watch.
And then, the last thing that we want to think about, is Hero content.
Traditionally, that's content that has a lot of mass appeal
and is broadly appealing, and generally takes a lot of time to produce.
But, what I want to re-frame that for, in the gaming space, is going to be
content that, again, is broadly appealing, might not take that much time to produce
but it's going to help you bring in a new audience.
So, for you, for these bigger walkthroughs
that's not necessarily going to be those big shareable moments
but, taking a live stream and cutting it down into a highlight
would be a best practice to appeal to a broader audience.
I've actually done that in the past with videos, and it's taken some time
but my audience reaction was, honestly, so worth it
and sometimes they even still bring it up now, about my past highlight videos.
Oh yeah, that's awesome; definitely lean into that one.
So, we had a long conversation today.
What do you think you'll take away and incorporate on the channel moving forward?
I'm definitely going to make more short-form content.
Any live streams I'm doing, I'm going to edit and make into highlights
as I feel that really appealed to a new audience and my current audience.
I definitely want to do a channel rebrand;
now we've spoken about it, I feel way more confident doing it
before, I was a bit unsure, but now I definitely want to do it.
And, check out my analytics more.
The click-through rate thing was really helpful.
I didn't know about it, so I'm definitely going to use that in future.
I'm sure you're not the only one, so it's a good thing we touched on it.
- Thanks for hanging out with us today. - No worries, thanks for having me.
And thanks everyone for watching.
Be sure to subscribe to the YouTube Creators channel
and let us know what you thought about this video below.
Thanks for hanging out, and we'll see you guys later.