What would YOU change?

MaurysMusic · #1 10-12-2023, 12:46 PM

For 176 weeks (and counting) we've been live-streaming Guitar Store Virtual Tour- an hour long program of guitar demos featuring current inventory & viewer requests.

If you were in charge - what would you change about this show? We're always looking to improve & we'd appreciate your constructive criticism. Thanks in advance!

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DCCougar · #2 10-12-2023, 06:45 PM

Who's got an hour for a virtual tour and demo? I mean, I'm not even in the market, having bought and sold for many years and finally settled on what I've got, but maybe just shorten your format?

At any rate, best of luck with your fine business!

mr. beaumont · #3 10-12-2023, 08:38 PM

I'd start with a link that works.

MaurysMusic · #4 10-13-2023, 07:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DCCougar

Who's got an hour for a virtual tour and demo? I mean, I'm not even in the market, having bought and sold for many years and finally settled on what I've got, but maybe just shorten your format?

At any rate, best of luck with your fine business!

Thanks DC. We do include time stamps, so those finding the replay can wheel to part 2, if one of those 4 guitars are more interesting than the 1st four. Also, we chop up the show afterwards and upload single videos of the 8 guitars after the fact. We call that playlist "As seen on VT". Thanks for your comments. I wonder if a 30-minute show would work better.

MaurysMusic · #5 10-13-2023, 07:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mr. beaumont

I'd start with a link that works.

Sorry about that; thanks for the heads-up. Link is fixed.

SRL · #6 10-13-2023, 08:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MaurysMusic

If you were in charge - what would you change about this show? We're always looking to improve & we'd appreciate your constructive criticism. Thanks in advance!

This is a cool format, sort of a video podcast. I like the guitar demos and professionally recorded audio (instead of cell phone audio etc.)

The main thing I would work on is improving the usefulness of the video by adding more "Chapters" in the video description/settings.

For example, on the "Martin D41, D-42 or D-45?" video, it would be great to be able to jump straight to the sound demos of each guitar. Right now, the main chapter is just a 30-minute long "Part 1". If that was divided up into a chapter for each guitar, it would be super helpful.

Most guitar comparision videos you see from other shops do this, so it's kind of an expectation at this point, and it's pretty easy to go back and add that to the videos. This makes your content much, much more useful for people who are searching for guitar demos.

Likewise, I'd go back and reorganize the titles of the videos a bit so that people can find them in searches:

I'd definitely get rid of the roman numerals in the early ones and just use normal numbers.
I would also edit the titles to include the names of every guitar in the video. This will help people discover your videos. Some videos have the names but most don't.
I would use a consistent naming scheme, that included the above changes For example, every title could follow the format "Maury's Virtual Tour #X: <Catchy hook> <Names of guitars>".
So for example, "Virtual Tour of our Martin Guitars: Episode XXXI" becomes "Maury's Virtual Tour #31: Battle of the Bursts! Martin OM-28, GPC-16E, D-28, D-41"
I would organize your playlist so that the videos are in order. If you go down to the bottom in the roman-numeral zone, for example, they're all out of order.

A lot of this work could easily be passed off to an intern/junior employee/etc, since it's pretty easy but somewhat time consuming due to the number of videos.

Lastly, since these are streams I get that it's kind of off-the-cuff but because of that, making good Chapters for your videos becomes really important. For example, in the "Martin D-41 D-42 or D-45?" there's about a 10 minute "back in 5 minutes" dead zone at the end of Part 1. If you're not going to edit that out, you can at least Chapter it so that people can skip over it.

Hope that helps, anyway!

edit: also, I focused on the "archive" of videos mainly because overall, most of your views will come from people watching the old recordings, not people coming to watch the live stream as it happens. It's kind of like broadcast tv vs. netflix: it's a lot easier to watch a show when you have the time, versus trying to plan your life around when the show will be on.

MaurysMusic · #7 10-13-2023, 03:51 PM

Thank you for the very thoughtful reply. I agree about changing the old titles and yes, it's just lack of man hours that has kept me from most of that chore. We don't have any extra hands-on-deck here. It's just 3 of us and I will be the one doing it. IMO the 30 minute segment could benefit from each guitar having the time stamps, but since we upload them 1 at a time later, I lazily thought that wouldn't matter. Maybe it does.* People can skip over the "back in 5" because part 2 is timestamped. No?

In any event, your comments are very valid & I appreciate you taking the time!

* I added timestamps to the D41, 42, 45 vid.