New Jersey public schools now require some sort of financial literacy course for all students. I remember taking a version of that – the basic message is: don’t borrow to excess or you’ll find yourself mired in debt. Seems reasonable enough. Another message is, you will want bigger, better things in the future such as a house or car, so save now and enjoy later. Got it: choose delayed over instant gratification.
But it seems on social media and digital platforms like YouTube, it’s all about the instant gratification. These are some examples and why they’ll only hurt you in the long run – like uncontrollable credit card debt.
1. Click baiting. This describes the phenomenon of a YouTuber putting up a video with a provocative title or thumbnail to get viewers to click on it. Views are a major performance metric on YouTube, with two major versions. The “video view” describes the number of times that someone has clicked to watch a particular video, whereas the “lifetime view” describes the cumulative number of watches that all videos on your channel have garnered. While click baiting may increase a content creator’s video views for a particular video, that creator’s subscribers will soon catch on to the trick and lose some trust in the channel, which will cause them to watch fewer future videos. In this way, the creator is sacrificing lifetime cumulative views for an instant high video view count.
2. Sponsorship craze. In the beauty and lifestyle category, content creators are paid in a few different ways – video views and YouTube advertisement overlay clicks, offline revenues like attending meet-ups, and sponsorships or partnerships by companies. The latter is a very direct sort of advertisement – the content creator is making a video to endorse a particular product or service and putting his or her name behind its efficacy, enjoyability or superiority over a competing item. Two years ago, Tom Ford had a huge ad campaign with many of the YouTubers I watched, and each YouTuber somehow incorporated the use of Tom Ford products – whether in Day-in-the-Life vlogs, monthly favorites, or “Day/Night Routines.” And just as soon as the Tom Ford craze started on YouTube it soon ended. Suddenly, the beauty gurus were going back to their tried-and-true facial and skincare products. Of course, I’m sure their campaign was successful in causing some followers to buy Tom Ford products. But in the same vein, I feel hesitant to continue to watch other content by those creators who only seemed to use Tom Ford products during this promotional period and never thereafter. I’ve found that some smaller beauty and lifestyle content creators on YouTube seem to be producing just sponsored videos. While this is quick money in the short run, I think that it will only hurt them in the long run, because they lose the subscriber’s trust in their honest opinions. It soon seems that they’re willing to talk up any product if the company is willing to pay them. While it is understandable that sponsorships are a major source of revenues for YouTubers, they are also not a free lunch. Your good name and credibility is at risk.
I hope that these are things I will remember if I ever become a more successful YouTuber or blogger.
xoxo,
the closing belle
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BLOGTOBER: Blogging every other day in October!
