Hey, everyone! I’m @Quakemz, and with my co-host @Manofinterests, we run Top Clack, a liveshow (and more) about anything and everything mechanical keyboard related, including but not limited to: Weekly news coverage, interviews with designers and popular keyboard personalities, Q&A’s, guides, build streams, typing tests, and much more.
Our continuing goal is education, information, and entertainment. Ushering in new mechanical keyboard enthusiasts with the information they need to succeed in this hobby.
You can catch our flagship show, a livestream every Thursday at 6pm PT on Twitch!
While I like the show and want it to get more viewers, I think having threads announcing stuff like streams is problematic, especially with Huey’s involvement with KeebTalk. Moreover, I don’t really think there are many people here who haven’t seen Top Clack before, so really it kind of just becomes spam.
I think there would be just as much of an issue if one of the other boardmembers started pushing their own projects a lot, but usually those are spaced much further apart than weekly livestreams.
Here are my thoughts: As an open platform where anyone can post anything, everyone should be able to post their projects; i.e Norbauer should be able to post his GBs when they come up, Input Club can post their stuff when they launch, etc. In the same vein, I do think Top Clack should be able to post things here. I think it would be wrong to exclude projects from moderators and admins JUST because they’re part of the team that keeps the platform going. That would actually be a disservice to the community, IMO, since it means people that only use Keebtalk would be discluded from knowing information about things they’re potentially interested in.
However, don’t get me wrong. There is no plans of spamming anything. I plan to reuse this same exact thread for the main show. I won’t make a new post weekly, like I usually do on r/mk, since this platform doesn’t need it. More like a friendly bump.
If you or anyone else has concerns, though, we’d love to address them. It’s not exactly a surprise, but this platform has much few users than something like r/mk, GH, or DT, which have been around for much longer. We want viewers, obviously, and we don’t think it’s unfair to post [within reason] to any of the platforms where people might be interested. Sorry if that causes any inconvenience, though we are open to discussion, of course!
I don’t think any livestream should be permitted to advertise by bumping their own thread every single week. Its way too frequent, and usually these threads have 0 interaction in them since its pointing people to another place to interact. Reddit is pretty strict about promoting your own stuff for a reason.
By all means, if you’ve got an exclusive piece of news that you want to announce in a thread and then point people to the livestream where you discuss it, thats fine. Or like how Huey posted about Sorbothane. I’m not saying that you guys shouldn’t be participating and posting on Keebtalk.
I think I can safely say that Keebtalk will dieout very quickly if the standard user experience is having to scroll past numerous advertisement threads everytime they open the site. Let me re-iterate, stuff like Interest Checks and Group Buys are ok, because there is an on going conversation, even though it is technically an advertisement.
What the International Kit did was great so far, since it was the first episode and they we taking a lot of feedback in. If they keep coming back, then thats a problem. And again, its totally fine if the International Kit Podcast had something noteworthy like when Top Clack did the anniversary giveaway. However, if they just came back to tell use that episode 2 is out, then thats not ok, in my opinion.
I suppose that’s one way to look at it. However, in your scenario, how would we ever appeal to a greater audience if not on the appropriate forums? If we never got to post when we have shows, people would have to happen upon old posts of ours for us to actually attract any new viewers, which seems a tad unfair, imo. We’re not a group buy. We’re not a one-time thing that ends. We’re a constant, living and ever-changing entity. It just seems a little unfair to say “You can only advertise once.”
People ignore blatant advertisements anyway. Idk if you noticed but this thread recieve almost no attention.
Normal products have the same issue. Most large brands fail on social media. Its because they spend most of their time asking for attention.
The brands that succeed on social media are the ones that provide content to the platform that people want to see. Not talking about plugging content that lives on another platform. I’m talking about organic interaction tailored for the platform. That is how you get new people interested.
You’re definitely not wrong, and I appreciate your viewpoint. Providing the best content you can in the best way is always a great means to get the right viewers. However, Top Clack is a bit of an oddity. Our flagship product is a livestream on Twitch. Now, if we compared the amount of people that have found us on r/mk because of our posts vs. the amount of people that actively search Twitch for mechanical keyboard content, it would be a monumentally staggering difference. Youtube might be more of an exception, but not being able to update our content on related platforms would be brutal. But then again, I’m also not at all opposed to see others do the same. For example, The Board and Keebtown also make multiple posts for their content, and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest, because I think they offer a good product that the community can benefit from.
Growing the community with information and education is always going to be something I value, period. Limiting people’s exposure to that is just not right. However, if a ton of people come to us and say they consider a once a week post/bump to be infuriating and clearly spam, we will obviously reconsider our position, but we tend to get substantially more positive comments and PMs on the fact that people were able to find us, so it’s hard for us to want to stop doing what we’re doing, I suppose.
Admittedly, part of this is maybe selfish, too. 2 years ago, I never would have imagined Top Clack to be where it is today. We have sponsors/partners, we have way more viewers, expanded content, a thriving support base, etc. It’s become somewhat of a small staple in our amazing community. And, I’ll be honest, what started as a silly side project with little effort has evolved into something that, in a couple years, might turn out to be an amazing and passionate full-time job. To be honest, I want that, I strive for it. Being able to advertise our unique product is something special to me.
I personally appreciate the posts. One suggestion to make it( the ad post) more informative would be to include a rough heads up on the news segment or the guest segment… part of the appeal for top clack, for me anyway, is the frank and honest unscripted discussion that rolls with the comments on chat and stuff. So I get it that the content cannot be fully outlined, but some info along the lines of :
( Read like Ron Burgundy )
Today on top clack …
Sorbothane ? Siliencing and cusioning your keebs with the magic of science !
Are Korean kustoms really better ? Why do some coughpuddsycough think so ?
Plus … we talk to a guest who’s doing some dope shit . Bring your curiosity, and maybe a few drinks and hang out with us today - airing live on twich and YouTube …
