I Forged the Myth of the Ancient Overlords-Chapter 26 - 0. Need a bit of help_1

Chapter 26: 026. Need a bit of help_1

Chapter 26: 026. Need a bit of help_1

“One hundred thousand followers…”

Lu Ban’s face fell.

He looked and saw that he only had 4,372 followers on his Old Day Video Network account; it even seemed like his Weibo followers were counted in.

Going from four thousand to one hundred thousand was no small project.

As Lu Ban understood, having a video go viral wasn’t just about personal effort; it was more importantly about the course of history. Some videos, simply by being in the right place at the right time, became viral by chance.

This concept could also be understood in another way, meaning that to gain followers and get more people to notice you, one viral video was far from enough.

To make viewers believe that the content creator has the ability to produce excellent videos, only then will they follow you.

“Luckily, this task isn’t timed…”

Lu Ban sighed.

Follow curr𝒆nt nov𝒆ls on fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com.

He tried clicking the system’s task panel and discovered there was a new selectable mode, but it was locked.

Moving the mouse over it only displayed a message that said “Please complete the career development task.”

“No shortcuts, huh.”

Lu Ban erased the system text and went back to the webpage.

He went to “Got It?” and typed “how to increase follower count on Old Day Video Network” into the search bar. Before he finished typing the phrase, several related search queries popped up, suggesting that a lot of people were concerned about this issue.

The answers varied widely.

“Just go and leave witty comments and jokes under popular videos, and maybe you’ll get tagged and go viral.”

“It’s easy, just repost giveaways worth 648 yuan, and watch your follower count surge.”

“You could pretend to be an official account of some company’s product, which could fool some blind followers.”

“If you’re a streamer, you could join a streamer guild, where veterans help the newcomers grow.”

Most of these felt like underhanded tricks, but who’s to say they couldn’t increase follower counts? For instance, Lu Ban had seen a Weibo account gain tens or even hundreds of thousands of followers by doing cash giveaways before transforming into a marketing account for advertising—quick and efficient.

But to gain one hundred thousand followers on Old Day Video Network through these means wasn’t very realistic.

He then found a highly upvoted answer.

“To accumulate followers, you need to establish a persona that lets viewers sense the presence of the content creator through their videos, making them like you as a person. The best way to do this is to leverage personal charisma, relying on appearance or talents, and tapping into trending topics…”

The answer was long-winded; before Lu Ban finished reading it, he checked the respondent’s Old Day Video Network account by their nickname to avoid a previous faux pas with an all-talk no-show top content creator. After seeing that this person had around one hundred and fifty thousand followers, Lu Ban continued reading the answer.

He took notes as he read until the end.

“…In the end, I want to point out that there are many methods to gain followers, but there’s only one that won’t work at all, and that’s focusing exclusively on creating MAD videos—it’s a dead end!”

Lu Ban clicked back to the person’s profile and viewed the earliest videos they posted.

All of them were animated MAD videos.

Such a painful realization.

After writing his notes, Lu Ban looked at the not-too-large Word document and felt a twinge of melancholy.

“Just the night before, I was worried about whether I could survive while playing the suona in front of those unknown deities, and now I have to worry about how to increase followers on a video website. Can life’s contrasts get any bigger?”

In the waiting gap for his takeout, Lu Ban roughly outlined his next steps in development.

There were some contacts from talent agencies in his private messages, but he was unsure if they were legitimate. If he could join one of these agencies, Lu Ban might be able to get initial resources and slowly build up, perhaps even reaching one hundred thousand followers.

About establishing a persona, Lu Ban felt he was average, unremarkable, and had nothing worth mentioning other than being handsome. Would viewers follow a content creator just for being handsome? Lu Ban wouldn’t, and by that logic, he doubted the effectiveness of such a strategy.

If being handsome could boost followers, I’d have shown my face in my first video, and I’d probably have tens of thousands of followers already!

However, when it comes to establishing an online persona, Lu Ban did have some ideas for the video he was about to edit.

“Not gonna lie, figuring out how to increase followers is way harder than dealing with all those weird things. Is the joy really in battling wits with people?”

The takeout had arrived. Lu Ban’s dinner tonight was a set meal of tomato and eggs with stir-fried meat. Counting the discounts, it was just over 20 yuan, which was cheap in high-cost Jiangcheng.

While eating dinner, Lu Ban found some supernatural videos to watch on the old video website.

In the past, these videos might have made his heart race, but now, Lu Ban just found them fake.

If fake stuff can scare people, why can’t real stuff do the same?

Lu Ban still seriously studied the positives in these videos.

After dinner, even catching the scheduled time to take out the trash, Lu Ban returned home to start editing the video.

He planned to edit his video into an exploration-type video.

So-called exploration videos are actually imitations of those exploration channel programs where a few people go to deserted factories, schools, hospitals, etc., at night for an adventure, fulfilling people’s curiosity to some extent. Some creators even visit the site in advance and use props to create a spooky atmosphere, attracting a large audience.

Since Lu Ban’s own footage was of a night-time exploration of Jiangcheng Grand Theater, and it contained supernatural elements, he thought producing a similar video would likely draw attention.

More importantly, as this was his second video, releasing two videos would establish his online persona as someone who, when full and with nothing better to do, liked to risk his neck on adventures. Audiences who liked this style would then eagerly expect more from Lu Ban and be more inclined to follow him.

Of course, editing a decent video from this material was not easy.

Lu Ban had experienced the events firsthand and knew which parts were eerie and which were just dull. But the audience wouldn’t know that, so sometimes it was necessary to use hints, paired with narration.

He also had to consider that switching between different camera angles too often could give the audience a sense of acting, diminishing the thrill.

Busily working for a week, Lu Ban finally managed to edit a video that he found passable.

“I was right, making videos is indeed harder than risking death on adventures!”

After naming and uploading the video, Lu Ban felt completely drained.

He had a late-night snack and still fell asleep to the sound of a hit song from the Spring Festival Gala.

The next morning, he opened the old video website to check the stats on his video.

150 views, followers increased by 10.

“Normal, the video is over twenty minutes long, not instantly impressive. It needs time to accumulate data.”

The third morning, 570 views, followers increased by 8.

“Pretty good, the view count is beyond expectation, but the follower growth is a bit low?”

The fourth morning, 996 views, followers increased by 16.

“Both follower growth and video views have hit new highs, the advantage is mine!”

The fifth morning, 1263 views, followers increased by 11.

Lu Ban tapped on the calculator.

“Crap, is this heading for disaster?”

He felt that maybe, probably, kind of, possibly, he needed a teeny bit of help.

*

If you’re passing by, don’t miss out on the one-click triple and likes!