Posts
What I do know is that one piece of marketing advice that is often repeated is to, when posting on internet forums, include a link back to your website in your description-- ideally with some kind of eye catching banner image.
This article will talk about the perils of doing so.
Exhibit A: GoNintendo forums
 |
| Perma ban for simply having a link in my forum signature to my own Youtube channel, rather than somebody else's |
So I used to lurk on the GoNintendo forums. I didn't post often, I guess I'm just an antisocial kind of guy when it comes to big forums like this. To be perfectly honest I frequent so many forums and respond to so many emails / Facebook PMs that I usually decide to not engage in every conversation that catches my eye.
A few months back I decided to change that because I was advised taking part in forum discussions with a link back to your site is a good way to get more eyeballs to it without being a Spammy McSpamster, "zomg look at my videoz guyzz" type, which tends to annoy people.
A few months back I decided to change that because I was advised taking part in forum discussions with a link back to your site is a good way to get more eyeballs to it without being a Spammy McSpamster, "zomg look at my videoz guyzz" type, which tends to annoy people.
This does make a lot of sense. As I explained in my first post, there's really only two ways to generate awareness of your Youtube channel if you don't have a money hose, and one of them is by tapping into audiences on other websites (the other is getting insanely lucky with the Youtube 'search' and Related Videos feeds, which is much harder these days given Youtube changed their algorithms to heavily favor videos that get a lot of views within a short time frame-- which means you need a big fanbase to make Related Videos feeds work for you).
I commented on maybe 3 or 4 forum posts, and made a couple threads myself about a few topics I thought would create some discussion and that I could actually respond to people about. I was permanently banned shortly thereafter, going so far as having my IP address blocked.
The funny thing is the email I received didn't say anything about a banning, it said I was warned and I am positive I never had any warning prior to this.
Maybe he just hated my signature, or it broke some kind of rule I'm oblivious to. Still, I don't think my banner stands out THAT much, so it can't be that.
By the way, KingBroly? Really? Did I get banned by a twelve year old Dragon Ball Z fan?
You might think this is an isolated incident. It's not.
Exhibit B: Giant Bomb forums
Giant Bomb is a site that advertises itself as being more community oriented than other gaming sites and stresses that it is supposed to be for gamers who want to share information.
Unfortunately, Giant Bomb is another one of these professional companies who allow volunteers to have ban privileges and basically don't supervise what they are doing. There was a noticeable incident a few months back where a moderator actually banned a contributor to Giant Bomb. Somehow these moderators are still in charge. The company just doesn't care.
Anyway, I was banned for posting my Youtube videos into the forums. It was labeled spam, even when my videos were creating buzz in the threads and people were having meaningful discussions about the topic.
As you can see these moderators are incredibly unpleasant to deal with. Let me put "MB"s words in quotations for you:
"Videos must be accompanied by significant commentary in order to be exempt from the Youtube spam rule, however in your case this will never happen."
What he meant is that even if I posted my entire script for the video into my post along with the video, I would STILL have my forum deleted and be issued a warning for "spamming".
The reason?
"You have contributed nothing to Giant Bomb other than a thinly veiled attempt at advertising your Youtube channel, which is why it was deleted. Like I said in a previous PM, this isn't a place to get more hits for your Youtube video."
Basically the reason is because he's an asshole. And incredibly freakin stupid!
How stupid?
#1: Youtube has back-linking now.
This is one of my videos that somebody (not me, honestly) posted onto the Star Wars The Old Republic game forums,
Youtube now advertises where a video is getting traffic from, so long as the place the video is being plugged has an RSS feed Youtube can easily read. And by clicking on the blue link text....
...people on Youtube can find the link to your website.
#2: Having lots of links on Youtube.com to your website improves your website's search rankings.
Duh? Youtube is not just a high PageRank domain, but it's a high PageRank domain owned by Google.
So congratulations, Giant Bomb forum moderators! By waging war upon Youtube you have successfully managed to reduce the amount of traffic Giant Bomb receives. There should be an achievement unlocked for that, and it should be titled, "I'm An Idiot".
I was actually contributing quite a lot to Giant Bomb by plugging my video into its forums.
By the way, the video he was so strongly opposed to was about in-game memorials to dead players in World of Warcraft. The video was designed to inform people about how Blizzard has honored notable employees, friends and well known players who died.
If you think it's just me this guy has a problem with, guess again. He's a jerk to everyone.
I said it before and I'll say it again: Giant Bomb moderators are incredibly unpleasant to deal with.
Shortly after this banning I decided to make it a rule that people would be able to submit Youtube videos to my own gaming community website. Like seriously, this is an audiovisual medium and it is difficult to fully illustrate many things about a game without showing footage of that game, and if you don't want people to post Youtube videos then why do you have a submit video option in your forum?
Anyway, now for the good news. I have managed to not be banned from a wide number of other forums. This incident is actually most surprising to me because I rarely ever have any sort of issues with forum moderators, and I frequent many forums. I guess it's just not as obvious who I am on those forums because I have been using the internet since 1996 and I didn't start calling myself The RPG Fanatic until I made the show in 2010.
That said, a lot of people take this internet forum stuff way too freakin seriously and forum moderators tend to be among them. I have learned over the years that the people in our society with the least amount of useful things to do with their day spend their hours as a volunteer forum moderator. These folks are also the most likely people to go on a power trip over some perceived slight, like posting on a videogame related forum with a link to your videogame related Youtube channel in your signature. They do these things usually out of boredom, or perhaps because if they didn't swing around their ban hammers every now and then they'd feel like they have no importance in society.
Forum moderators tend to perceive themselves as Gandalf facing off against the Balrog; only they can defend the Fellowship of the forum against the spammers and trolls!
Anyway, the best advice I can give to avoid being perma banned by places like this is to NOT have an account name that is identical to your Youtube channel name, or even imply at all that you have any direct connection to the channel owner in your signature.
My crime was selecting the username 'therpgfanatic' for my account and then putting a banner to my channel in it so people might also check out my site who like my opinions and views. Apparently forums like the one GoNintendo.com and GiantBomb.com runs don't want that.
No comments:
Post a Comment