He posted a poll with three options: what should I film next? Sixty per cent picked the third option, the one he had added to fill the list and did not want.
But he felt he had to respect the vote. So he made that video, it took him three weeks, and it was the worst thing he published that year: fewer views than usual, few comments, and he himself was not convinced by a word of it.
The irony is that when he went through the comments, the people who had asked for that subject had not watched it.
Why a poll misleads you
The difference is simple and important: voting costs nothing, and watching costs ten minutes of somebody's life.
People vote for what sounds exciting and watch what solves a problem they have, and the two do not coincide. So a poll measures what reads well in one line, not what actually gets watched. That is the idea set out at length in how do you find out what your audience wants: behaviour is truer than words.
This does not mean shutting your door. It means opening it in the right place.
The one rule: they take part in the material, not the decision
Write this sentence somewhere you can see it: your audience is an excellent source of material and not a decision committee.
The decision is what you make, for whom, in what form, and to what standard. That is yours, and nobody else can take it, because you are the one spending the weeks and carrying the result.
The material is the questions, the experiences, the examples, the stories, the footage and the objections. Your audience holds those in quantities you do not have, and every one of them brings your video closer to real people.
Five forms of involvement that actually work
1. The open question before you write the script. Once you have picked the subject, and before you write, ask: "I am making a video about X, what is the thing you want me to answer in it?" What comes back is the map of your video, because people will tell you what you did not know they did not know.
2. Asking for material. "Send me the worst shot you ever filmed and I will explain how to fix it." That gives you real visual material you could never buy, and it makes everyone who sent something wait for the video personally.
3. A choice between options you want. If you do poll, make every option something you want to make. Then any result helps you, and the vote becomes a way of ordering your priorities rather than deciding instead of you.
4. A question inside the video that makes the second part. End on a specific question, collect the answers, and build the next video out of them. That turns your comments into organised material and gives part two a ready audience.
5. The committee of ten. Pick ten of your most engaged viewers, make a small group with them, and show them ideas, titles and thumbnails before publishing. Ten interested people give you a more useful opinion than a thousand poll votes, because they explain why.
How to phrase a question that helps you
The bad question: "what do you want me to film?" It brings scattered suggestions that cannot be executed, and it leaves you feeling obliged to please everybody.
A good question is narrow and directed:
- "What is the hardest part of [next video's subject] for you?"
- "What mistake did you make with [the subject] that you would not want anyone else to make?"
- "If you had one question about [the subject], what would it be?"
Those phrasings give you sentences you can put in your script as they are. And the community tab is the right place for this kind of question; what works there and what does not is the subject of the community tab on your channel.
When the answers come back differently than you expected
It will happen that you ask and the answers point somewhere you had not planned. You have three sound responses:
Accept and adjust if what came back is genuinely better than your idea. There is no honour in clinging to a plan.
Accept and save if it is good but it is a different video. Write it in your idea list rather than cramming it into this one.
Explain and decline if it does not suit your channel. And that is not rudeness if you say it plainly: "good question, but it is outside what I know, and I do not want to talk about something I am not good at." Audiences respect that sentence more than a weak video.
The form of involvement that never fails
The simplest and most effective: let their contribution appear in the video itself.
Read the comment on screen, name the person, and say that their question is why this section exists. One moment like that does more for your relationship with your audience than ten polls, because it proves you actually read. And how to organise your time reading and replying is the subject of how should you reply to comments.
What never to hand over
- The title and the thumbnail. People pick what they like, not what makes a video get opened.
- The video's length. They will always say "shorter", then watch the long one if it is good.
- The standard of the work. Do not publish something you know is weak because somebody hurried you.
- The channel's direction. A repeated request from ten people does not mean your channel should change.
- Your dates. Promising a date to quieten a question in the comments is the fastest way to lose their trust.
When to say no
Say no when the request is:
- Outside what you actually know.
- Against what you built the channel on.
- Beyond the money or time you have, with a result that will not repay it.
- From one loud person rather than a repeated pattern.
And say no once, clearly, then move on. Long explanations and repeated apologies make the refusal look negotiable.
Does involvement actually help? Measure it
Do not rely on how it feels. In the video where you built a section on your audience's material, look at two things: did people stay through that section specifically, and did the comments come back more specific than usual. If yes, widen the method. If no, the problem is in how you phrased the question rather than the idea.
The whole thing in a line
Open a wide door for material and keep your hand on the decision. An audience wants to see itself in your work; it does not want to run it. And most people who asked you for something want to feel you heard them, which happens with one sentence in a video far more than it happens by handing your channel to a vote.