Because a lot of you guys seemed interested when I brought it up, here are the basics of appealing to the public on scratch. This guide will be split up into a few main sections: remixes, online image, quality of work, general audience, and thumbnails. Section one: Remixes. You all remember my last project, right? That was a project that was made to be remixed. Not only that, but no matter how the individual remixed it, the audience would look at me as the focus of the project. This spreads word of my profile to the followers of anyone who were to remix the project. However, if it were a contest (another project made to be remixed) then there would be a higher likelihood of the remixer being the focus of the project and therefore they would be more likely to gain followers from my post than I would. To summarize, you want to make a few projects that are made to be remixed but still bring the audience back to you if they enjoyed the quality of the work. A few good examples could be animation meme templates or comics (encourage reactions). The goal is to draw the audience back to your profile. Section two: Public image. I put a lot of thought into how I chose to present myself online. My current online presentation is not entirely disingenuous, but it is definitely filtered to say the least. I chose to observe the similarities in the way popular scratchers engage with their audience and show their personality. A few similarities I noticed were as listed: Politeness, relatability, comedic appeal (silliness), and positive but generally impersonal interactions with fans. You do not need to change your personality, you just need to accentuate the traits that help with popular appeal. For example, I am naturally a pretty polite person, but I have a large ego when it comes to my skills. I make sure to maintain polite interactions and limit the times I speak about how I personally feel about the quality of my work. That way, I can remain relatable, but still likeable. You need to be aware of your strengths and weaknesses and highlight the traits that appeal to your audience.
Section three: Quality of work. This is the most important step. You need to maintain a constant high quality of work in each post you make. Avoid crapposts and filler. Some quick and easy ways to instantly improve the quality of your projects are by adding music, zoom-in code (if the focus of the project is an image), and a thumbnail. When remixing projects, you need to do so in a way that is transformative and could be viewed as an improvement to the original project. That way, the original poster’s audience will show interest in your work because of your relation to op and the quality of your work. It is very important to make your posts visually appealing, no matter the subject. You have to remember that it does not count as a view unless the audience clicks on the green flag. You can ensure they do so by limiting text focused projects and having a high quality thumbnail that the viewer may want a better look at. Even if the project is text focused, you want something within the project that makes the viewer click the flag. It is definitely harder to put in the extra time and make your projects look better, but they are worth it in the long run. Section four: General audience. When you first make a scratch account, the people who view your project and like it will help you realize who your audience is. In order to guarantee views for the first few projects, be sure to put it in relevant studios. If you put them in studios where they do not belong, that will lower your reputation and lower the chances of people taking interest in your work. Do not be a spammer. Once you get a few people taking interest in your work, look for trends in identity and interests in your audience. Take note of those and incorporate them into future projects or use that information to form an online persona that can appeal to that audience. Your audience will not always have the same interests as you, but it can help gather more attention from their followers if they see them favorite your project. You will need to make a few posts for your audience, not yourself. For example, my audience seems to enjoy femboys and tadc. I am not a huge fan of either, but I will make the occasional tadc/femboy post in order to maintain their interest and gather some followers from their fanbase. This is advertising 101, if a project does well then make a part two or a post that appeals to the same audience. Section five: Thumbnails. Thumbnails give the viewer an idea of what the project is about and what the inside of the project will look like. You could spend a ton of time coding a brilliant game, but if the thumbnail is just scratchcat you will not get many views. You want thumbnails to have comedic appeal, aesthetic appeal, curious appeal, or emotional appeal. The thumbnail should match the tone of the project. For example, my introduction project had aesthetic appeal. I put some visually pleasing art of myself on the thumbnail in order to give the viewer not only an idea of what the project was like, but also induce a desire to click on it based on the visual appeal of the thumbnail. Comedic appeal makes the viewer amused and they click on it to get more serotonin. Curious appeal makes the viewer wonder something that the thumbnail claims to address and they click on it in order to get answers. Emotional appeal induces emotions in the viewer or shows promise of an emotional project. Do you like angst? Emotional appeal. Thumbnails are first impressions. First impressions are important the irony of this being one of my only crapposts
