Goodbye Facebook, Hello YouTube - and Episode 72 of Understanding Photography with Kim Ayres
Last night was my final video podcast of Understanding Photography with Kim Ayres on Facebook Live.
Not that I'm quitting the podcast, rather I'm jumping ship - from next Tuesday I will be live streaming it on YouTube instead.
When I decided I would start sharing my knowledge and helping other photographers with a weekly live broadcast – oh so many moons ago, back at the start of Lockdown in early 2020 - one of the many decisions I had to make was where to present it.
I looked at the number of subscribers I had on YouTube – a little over 300.
I looked at the number of followers I had on Facebook – well over 2,000.
It seemed like a no-brainer. As the saying goes, if you want to catch fish, go where the fish are.
I set up a Facebook group, invited as many people as I thought might be interested, and asked them to spread the word.
And then with a combination of excitement, fear, nervousness, and an overwhelming sense of imposter-syndrome, I started the first podcast.
Initially I thought I would try it for 3 months, but here I am still doing them over 16 months later, enjoying every one.
However, building a substantial following has eluded me from the beginning.
I have a handful of wonderful, interested, committed participants who come back every week, submit their images for critique, enter the challenges, and leave comments throughout the broadcast. And then I have another couple of handfuls who poke their head around the door every now and then.
But while I periodically pick up new followers, others drift away and overall, the numbers have remained fairly constant – never growing beyond a certain point.
It's not for lack of trying. I have boosted posts. I have taken out Facebook Ads. I have watched the tumbleweeds roll past, having zero response from these things (apart from an increase in spam from companies telling me they can optimise my marketing for me for a large fee).
Of course initially I hoped that everyone would be so impressed with my amazingness that they would spread the word and within a few weeks I would be a global phenomenon.
I do have a global reach, by the way. My regulars include people from Norway to South Africa, the USA to India, and several other places in between.
But phenomenon is not really a word I can attach to it.
On a technical side, several times since I began, Facebook has changed its interface and I've suddenly found myself unable to find comments, or see whether I'm actually broadcasting, or it's flashed up information at me that I am powerless to do anything about.
All this while I'm live in front of people. It's not a pre-recorded show that I can stop, rewind and redo. A certain level of mild embarrassment and humiliation has become normalised...
Additionally, I keep coming across people who say they are interested, but don't do Facebook.
So I'd already started wondering whether I should consider YouTube, and a couple of weeks back did a test podcast to see how difficult it might be technically.
Apart from a few minor differences, it was pretty straightforward.
But the real moment of enlightenment came when I was in conversation with someone else and explaining the difference between Facebook and YouTube as a live streaming platform.
Suddenly I heard the words tumbling out my mouth that it was fundamentally about the different business models.
Facebook doesn't want to show your followers your content, unless you pay them to.
Ask any creator who has a following on Facebook and they will tell you (quite often wild-eyed and frothing at the mouth) at their extreme frustration that every time they put something up, it is shown to less than 1% of their followers. IF and ONLY IF that post gets comments and likes, Facebook MIGHT show it to a few more. But really, they want you to Boost your post and pay to reach the people who have already said they love your work and would like to see more of it, but Facebook is not showing it to them.
YouTube, on the other hand, makes its money off advertising.
They want as many people as possible (who are likely to be interested) to watch your live streams and videos, so they can sell advertising space around it.
So where Facebook will only show your content to a tiny handful of people who already know you, YouTube will recommend you to people who have watched and liked similar content, and so potentially bring new viewers your way.
And as I listened to myself explaining all this to someone else, I desperately wished I'd realised this over a year ago.
Of course it remains to be seen whether this will be the start of a very small snowball that will grow and grow, or whether I'll just get swallowed up and lost in the millions of hours of video uploaded every hour to YouTube.
But at this moment in time, it feels I have nothing to lose and potentially something to gain.
Meanwhile enjoy Episode 72 below, where I review all the images submitted to the Hands Photo Challenge, and dish out smug points for my favourites...
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0:00 - Welcome, what's coming up, greetings and comments
03:33 - Reviewing images on the theme "Hands" submitted to the Facebook Group, "Understanding Photography with Kim Ayres"
1:22:55 - Summing up
1:26:00 - Coming up next week - why I'm moving the live stream to YouTube
1:33:58 - End
If you found this interesting/useful/entertaining, then please consider supporting these podcasts and blog posts via buymeacoffee.com/kimayres
Be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/kimayres – to be notified of new podcasts and behind-the-scenes videos.
And, or course, if you would like to submit a photo for feedback, or just ask
a photography related question, then do join my
Understanding Photography with Kim Ayres Facebook group and I will put
it into the following podcast:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/240842990388815/
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