What I Learned About the Algorithm from one of My Son’s YouTube Videos
Here’s a few things you can do to get Mr. Algorithm to notice you
Tim Denning says we need to stop blaming the algorithm for shitty content.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t give a second thought to how algorithms on social media apps work until I began writing on Medium and started my YouTube channel, and now I beginning to try to figure out Mr. Algorithm’s mind.
People have told me it’s a hopeless cause, but I am a stubborn person.
So I decided today to analyze how my son’s fourth YouTube video got more views (519) in one day than all the videos on my channel in one month.
It was a blast monitoring it throughout the day … 50 views, 111, 177, 213, 298, 305, 402 and I wanted to see if I could draw a few simple conclusions.
Analyzing the Algorithm
I wanted to try to understand how his video got the algorithm’s attention.
The title of his video was, “Jeffy from SML prank call on his mom.”
Yes, my son and I drove around and looked for a payphone (until I remembered to search for one on my phone) to make a prank call on his mom in the voice of Jeffy, an satirical puppet from the SML YouTube channel.
My son is thirteen, by the way, and his YouTube channel is called Hagfish Kid. If you have a son who likes SML and everything pop culture, you might enjoy watch him prank call his mom together and earn some street cred with them.
The obvious reason my son’s video took off (and mine didn’t) like a dog after a cat was his skillful use of search-friendly key words for the title of his video.
Primarily SML and Jeffy are popular searches. Other kids use those words to search for SML and they stumbled upon his video with those key words.
Maybe, prank call to mom, are also search-friendly words for teens too.
In comparison, his videos with less search-friendly key topics such as his Fruit Gusher review (23 views) and My Writing Journey on my channel (32 views) did not get a sniff of Mr. Algorithm’s attention — though they’re great content.
The Moral of the algorithm
Check your key words in your title to a Medium article carefully. Try to use words other people might be searching for or, shall I say, Mr. Algorithm is using to spit out your stories as curated offerings to other subscribers.
I also read from Finding Tom that an article on Medium needs to receive 100 claps in the first hour after it’s published for it to be curated by the algorithm and to be recommended to other readers in email digests and other formats.
I don’t know if this is true. As Tim Denning says, Mr. Algorithm is a mercurial guy and his number one job is to prioritize content for advertising purposes, and he changes his thought process every few months for unknown reasons.
Tim says not to piss off Mr. Algorithm. I scrubbed my last sentence like a crime scene to make it nicer to not have me black listed by the algorithm.
So, if you’re new to Medium like me (198 followers), it might be hard to get those 100 claps in the first hour a story is published — so be sure to give 50 clasps to this article and everyone else to help stories gain traction to go viral.
Clap, clap, clap, clappity, clap, clap, clap. Seriously, I forget to clap for some of the best articles because I get so absorbed in reading them. Anyone do this?
Tags are Important too
This might give me away as a Medium newbie, but tags are critical to get Mr. Algorithm to notice you. They’re like flowers or a card on Valentine’s Day. You are not going to get far without using the tags recognized by you know who.
Or on Valentine’s Day with some flowers, a card and box of chocolates.
I didn’t even know (since with Medium it’s all about jump in the water and learn how to swim) that Medium has 73 Top Writer tags based on the most popular subjects written about on Medium.
Using these tags in some coded way gets Mr. Algorithm to notice your story.
My most read articles on Medium are on recovery, but I somehow forgot to include the words addiction and sobriety as tags in my last article — so be sure to look at the top tag list and to see which tags relate most to your content.
Do some meta analysis
You can also type a search into the magnifying glass to find out more about how to understand the algorithm to boost engagement with your articles.
Here’s one I found with great search-friendly terms in the title, “You Won’t Be a Successful Content Creator Until You Understand the Algorithm.”
Matt Lillywhite explains how your stats provide a good barometer to see if an article meets key metrics the algorithm tracks such as read/watch time, retention rate. and many other things.
I applied this to one of my recovery articles, “The Beautiful Lie.” It got 146 views and 86 reads for a 59% read ration. If this were one of my high school classes, that would be an F, but I hear anything over 45% is good on Medium.
Medium veterans, let me know if the 45% rate is what you consider for good.
My best stat of all was the average reader spent two minutes and 36 seconds on my two minute article, so this tells me my content was engaging. If it said the average read time was 20 seconds, I’d need some bang in the beginning.
Small changes increase reader engagement
Lillywhite’s 7K-viewed article (I’m figuring out writing about writing on Medium is a good topic) gave four suggestions to boost engagement:
- Wrap your content in beautiful packaging
Who could resist a title like “The Beautiful Lie.” Especially to people (like myself) who have believed many beautiful lies in the midst of addiction? A good image relating to the title and content can also harness engagement.
In contrast, all your good content can go by the wayside with a bad title.
But we’re also talking formatting 101 here. Those bold headings, pull out quotes, three key points to make it easier for a reader to skim content to see where an article is going help keep a reader roped into your amazing story.
2. Harness the power of an interesting intro
I think this is the best advice. If we’re honest we all stay with a story if it hooks our attention in the first paragraph or two and I’ve read some snoozers and quickly swiped to another story.
Maybe, you’ve done the same with mine. As a writer, that’s one of the things I likes best about writing on Medium is that it forces me to consider my reader at all times. When I fail to consider them, that’s when they probably bail.
3. Remove any fluff to create more meaningful impact
There is fluff to every article you write. Some wordiness. Parts of the story or details that don’t really matter. Whole paragraphs lacking any fire or mojo.
Hit the delete or revise those sentences because that’s where the story dies.
I asked my wife to proofread my last story. She honed right in on the fluff. Stuff I thought was interesting, she felt read like it was “you had to be there” kind of material like when I bumped a VCR cart into a podium to make a girl laugh. I had to get that in my writing. I can be stubborn like that.
4. Make your content stupidly simple to consume
I read some advice to write for an eight-grade audience on Medium. I looked at my writing with its more literary style and I adjusted my prose.
Online writing is a different beast. The sooner you realize this the view-to- read ratio and average read time will like start tick up to a higher level.
Some informative facts followed by a shameless plug
I read on Business Insider the other day that YouTube subscribers must have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the past year to monetize their channel through ads.
Thank you if you’re one of my nine subscribers. I could use a few more.
I started my channel a month ago to share with others what I’m learning about about writing a memoir, and after I joined Medium, writing on Medium. If this sounds helpful to your, you know what to do …
You will feel a slight endorphin buzz knowing I will feel better sometime later today when I look at my channel and have 10, 11, 12 and 13 subscribers.
It’s quality content I promise. Stuff I learned from writing for the past nine years from Mary Karr, Steve Pressfield, Anne Lamott, Shawn Coyne, etc.
Thanks for reading my article to the end. I hope it helps you understand the algorithm and how to get your great writing the attention it deserves.
Don’t forget to give me that endorphin buzz here. Make my weekend!
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