{"id":986,"date":"2014-02-18T04:49:51","date_gmt":"2014-02-18T04:49:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sneakerheaddata.wordpress.com\/?p=986"},"modified":"2015-12-17T14:59:58","modified_gmt":"2015-12-17T19:59:58","slug":"sneakerhead-influence-youtube","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stockx.com\/news\/sneakerhead-influence-youtube\/","title":{"rendered":"Sneakerhead Influence – YouTube"},"content":{"rendered":"

Update: The following people were mistakenly left off our Top 25 list: <\/span>BULL1TRC<\/span><\/a> (55k subscribers), <\/span>DBtown24<\/span><\/a> (48k) and <\/span>Zaya X<\/span><\/a> (20k).\u00a0 That was our fault; we just missed ’em.\u00a0 Sorry about that. We’ll do better next time.<\/span><\/p>\n

A few weeks ago we posted “Sneakerhead Influence by the Numbers<\/a>” where we ranked 33 sneaker people, sites and shops based on their aggregate Facebook, Twitter and Instagram following.\u00a0 The feedback from that post was fantastic, but we were asked at least a few times, “What about YouTube?”\u00a0 Well, let it never be said that Campless doesn’t strive to give the people what they ask for.<\/p>\n

We at Campless are data experts, not social media mavens, so we’ve invited one of the top YouTube sneaker influencers to assist.\u00a0 [Insert obligatory Cliff Paul assist joke].\u00a0 TBlake<\/a> was actually one of the very first people to catch on to what we’re doing, posting a video<\/a> about Campless way back when we were just data pups.\u00a0 So it only makes sense that he help us out.\u00a0 We’ll be honest – we don’t watch too much YouTube.\u00a0 But we are certainly aware of it’s growing impact on sneaker culture.<\/p>\n

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According to TBlake:<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Relative to other communities on YouTube, sneaker channels have a lot of growth to do.\u00a0 However, it wasn’t until this past year (2013) that a sneaker channel broke the 100k mark – now we have several.\u00a0 There are also several users who have surpassed 50k, numbers previously unprecedented and certainly a sign of growth and interest.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The most significant limitation of our first influence analysis is that followers is an overly simplistic measure of influence.\u00a0 It ignores engagement metrics like comments, retweets, favorites, likes, etc.\u00a0 For YouTube, we recognize the same issue.<\/p>\n

As TBlake explains:<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Number of subscribers is a good starting point.\u00a0 While reaching the ‘000th’ subscriber on YouTube is certainly satisfying, the most important, but least transparent, measure of influence is audience retention – how long viewers spend on any given video.\u00a0 Retention can vary based on topic, brand, even strategic video editing.\u00a0 For purposes of the Campless analysis, however,\u00a0 audience retention is an analytic that only the content creator can access, so it can’t be used to determine who has more influence.\u00a0 But keep in mind that User X with 1000 subscribers could have a much greater retention than User Y with 100,000 subscribers.\u00a0 Because audience retention isn’t\u00a0available, the next best queue comes from subscriber sharing, which can be measured through likes, comments, and +1s of posts on Google Plus. \u00a0Unlike retention, this data is publicly available if you click through each video on a brand’s or individual’s YouTube page.”\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Notwithstanding TBlake’s recommendation to include YouTube sharing metrics, our analysis today will focus on number of subscribers – just like the previous analysis focused on followers and not engagement metrics like retweets.\u00a0 As he mentioned above, number of subscribers is a good starting point.\u00a0 These posts are just the tip of the iceberg for sneaker influence.\u00a0 We want to start simple with our audience and, together, build our way up to more complicated metrics analyses.<\/p>\n

Methodology:<\/strong><\/p>\n