Five Lessons from Blaukat's Videos
Posted by Pete Robbins on Mar 1st 2021
I’m kind of late to the YouTube addiction game. Sure, I’ve watched plenty of fishing videos and other time-wasters over the years, but only during COVID times did I realize that the venue is the modern day version of the Magic Eight Ball. It has an answer for everything.
Lately I’ve been watching a lot of the videos on Randy Blaukat’s “Intuitive Angling Channel” and while my attention span is relatively short, I find myself watching them all the way through. Apparently a lot of other people do, too, because last week he had about 16,000 subscribers and as I’m writing this he’s closing in on 21,000. You wouldn’t expect that an angler who had some of his biggest moments on stage in the late 80s and early 90s (if you’ve never seen the video of him “sinking” a boat to win at Buggs Island, watch it tonight) to be embrace YouTube, let alone build such a popular channel, but he’s getting there. Here are five lessons I’ve learned about fishing media from immersing myself in the Tube:
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Content is Still King: Blaukat doesn’t use fancy graphics. He doesn’t use intro music or any special effects. It’s just him staring into a camera and talking. What he does successfully is mix up the topics that he speaks about – there’s some angling history, some technical advice, and a sprinkling of editorializing about the state of the sport. It’s all original and distinctive.
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Distinctive Perspectives Matter: Much of the most compelling material on Blaukat’s channel is him talking about things that no one else can talk about – his past tournament performances, time he spent in the boat with people like Rick Clunn, etc. Every pro has the ability to produce such content about the most compelling moments of their careers, but few are doing it.
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Material Can be Advertorial Without Being a Hard Sell: Many of Blaukat’s videos involve lures from his sponsors like Megabass, including modifications to those lures. I have no idea if the sponsors are perturbed by the fact that he’s saying they’re not “perfect out of the package,” but I can tell you that I’m more likely to buy the products he explains in details than I would from a pure sales pitch.
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Winning is Secondary: With all due respect to Randy, who I like and who has enjoyed a long and successful career on tour, he won his last B.A.S.S. event in 2000 and qualified for his last Classic in 2004. He fished his last Forrest Wood Cup in 2008, just three years after YouTube was founded. A lot of anglers who have won titles more recently have accomplished far less on social media over the past few years.
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You’re Never Too Old to Embrace Technology: Some of Blaukat’s contemporaries, and even some of his elders, like Rick Clunn, have recently and/or reluctantly embraced new technological models for maintaining their careers. Like front-facing sonar, like it or not, that’s the future of the game. Even if catching little green and brown fish remains the goal, the ways that you monetize that are constantly changing.
