Among the year's accomplishments, an important place goes to our video channel. We started working on it in earnest on September 1, 2016, and since then it has become a major part of what we do.
It turned out to be no easy task. It takes a lot of time, and in front of the camera I still feel, to put it mildly, a bit awkward; I still haven't managed to smile on camera even once.
Whenever I'm recording, I always think of the “Fun with Flags” segment from The Big Bang Theory.
But overall, this work brings enormous satisfaction—we are getting the results we want and have grown our audience significantly. On average, a video gets 500,000 views, and our audience retention metrics are very strong.
Here is a short overview of our work over the year, where you can also observe the evolution of my beard, hairstyle, and sweaters.
What didn't work out:
- we failed to maintain the planned pace of two videos a week;
- we still haven't figured out what to do about women. The female share of our audience just isn't growing.
If I were selling something, this kind of breakdown—with “men aged 25–34” making up the dominant share—would probably be ideal, but we'd like to see a gender balance closer to real life.
Women and girls, what are we missing for you?
Our plans for 2017:
To set up a studio, even a makeshift one. Right now we can only record when there's enough natural light, and that has already become an obstacle.
More investigations in video format.
My weekly one-hour live stream with answers to questions and commentary on current events.
And more broadly, developing a new channel for broadcasts. We'll invite onto our live streams people who are effectively barred from major TV and radio outlets.
Don't forget to subscribe to our channel. It currently has 314,000 subscribers, and we want to reach at least one million.
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