Case study: operating a YouTube channel on your own game
Why does a developer need a b2c channel on YouTube for his game and how much he can cost, – they told in the column for App2Top.ru Alternativa Games specialists.
The material was prepared by Gennady Klyachman, marketing director of the company, and Maxim Khusainov, creative producer of Alternativa Games.
Gennady Klyachman and Maxim KhusainovHistory
The idea of our own program appeared to us back in 2011. Back then, few games could boast of their own channel. At that time, the audience of Tanks Online was growing very actively. We considered the game’s YouTube channel as one of the important ways to communicate with it.
In the summer of 2012, a pilot release of the “Video Blog” was released. It was shot without a detailed script, without a prepared text and understanding how the video should look. There was only a plan to “Tell about this, this and this”, so the presenter in front of the camera just shared the news of the game.
A frame from the first issue of the blog
The first issue received a great response from the players.
It became clear that it was necessary to shoot further.
Time passed, we released 5 video blogs, then 10, 20, 30 … The experience grew, the quality of the picture and scripts grew, the number of viewers grew, new categories appeared. We got new equipment, a studio for filming, as well as a charming co-host who makes the male half of the community stick to the screens for 5-10 minutes every Friday.
The video blog quickly won the place of the main information platform of the game. All the most important news of “Tanks Online” is first discussed here, and only then in VK, FB, forums and chats (one and a half to two thousand comments are often collected under each video).
In the spring of 2019, Tanks celebrated the 300th edition in Russian. To date, the video blog is also published in English, plus each English issue is translated into nine more languages in subtitles.
Frequency of releases
Since the launch, we decided to do one issue per week. Of course, the most interesting thing — development news — was not enough for every Friday. Therefore, we stretched the topics into several issues, held contests in video blogs, made reviews and comic headings.
But one day we thought: “And why make a video blog on a schedule if there is nothing to show in it?!”. We tried to publish without a schedule (when it’s ready, then we released it). The statistics of such videos were terrible, as was the feedback from viewers — “It’s better to have empty issues, but every week!”.
YouTube channel “Tanks Online”
In addition, we experimented a lot with different categories inside the video blog.
Some of them immediately showed their inconsistency. For example, the heading “Tips of the seasoned” did not go (in it experienced players talked about the subtleties of playing on some kind of weapons or in a certain game mode). It was very expensive to make these headings because of the need to include an unprepared person in the customized production.
Now we regularly employ three employees in the production of commercials. We also have a presenter working on a contract.
By the way, recently a digest with videos of our influencers appeared in the video blog. In this way we help their growth. However, this is a mutually beneficial cooperation. They also promote our channel.
Numbers
The tankionline channel now has more than 400 thousand subscribers. This is a good figure, at the level of popular influencers from Russia (Anton Logvinov has 600 thousand, TheDRZJ has about 370 thousand). However, this is significantly less than that of the leading game channels in Runet. For example, y StopGame.ru — one and a half million subscribers.
On average, 60 thousand viewers watch each video today. However, there are quite a lot of videos on the channel whose views reached the threshold of 100 thousand or more.
And yet why?
Just like seven years ago, the video blog is our main and central channel of communication with the audience of the product, a way to inform about changes.
The main plus here: you choose what information you want to submit, how exactly to do it. Also, the video quickly becomes the main point of contact with the audience, and there is often more trust in it than in the answers of official representatives on other platforms.
On the set
From the point of view of business metrics (retention rate, re-engagement, organic growth) — it also makes sense, but in this regard it is far from our main tool.
Today we consider our YouTube page also as a traffic channel for new products.
By the way, we have already tried to use it at the launch of mobile products. It turned out well, a small part of the audience came to test the new product. However, we have not yet resorted to large-scale promotion of games with the help of a blog.
Management Tips
Over the years of working with video, we have conducted many experiments. Something caught on, something had to be abandoned. Thus, we have identified several basic objective rules of success.
- Periodicity. It’s very easy for the viewer to wait for something every Friday. You can follow this like a TV series. The frequency of “once a month” without an exact date works much worse.
- Cheapness. Video blogs should not be expensive for the company, otherwise they will not live long. Do not try to make the “Best video blog”, but do not slide into a hastily concocted craft. Balance! One issue of our Video Blog costs about 50-60 thousand rubles with a timekeeping of 5-10 minutes. In addition to the cost of each video, you also need to take into account the capex, in our case it is a whole studio with equipment.
- Competence. Releases should be created by competent people who are familiar with the product. This means that, with a high degree of probability, these people should at least partially be inside the company.
***
Video is the king of content nowadays, people are tired of reading sheets of text and prefer to watch a short and informative video.
Working with the audience of a large online game using YouTube has not been a whim for a long time, it is musthave. Whether you want to do it in the format of video blogs or otherwise is up to you. In our case, this option worked best.
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