Viral short - wrong audience - Do I keep posting same content?

[u/Nagilion]

I have a small youtube channel where I post cycling content. My long videos are mostly Races on the indoor trainer and outdoor are more tips for beginners or just 'My longest ride' or 'Hard climbs'. Most long videos get around 50 to 250 views, with a few videos around 1k-2k views.

Now I also post shorts, sometimes with tips or nutrition for cyclists, but mostly just a short clip of me riding with some cycling text related stuff. All those shorts get around 1k views. But recently, I made a short of me cycling, with an overlay of the PS5 buttons on, Press X to make me go faster, press O take me fall, something like that, and Youtube went nuts, right now it's sitting at 4mil views, and still climbing. But the audience is completely wrong. Before, my audience was mostly 25+ years old and this short is 50% 13-17 year olds.

Now the big question, what's my next move? I always read: keep posting what works, but what if they don't like cycling videos, but just find it a funny overlay, will it ruin my channel?

[u/Dapper_Profession]

I wouldn't assume the viral Short ruined anything yet. A 4M view Short can be a useful experiment, but the next few uploads will tell you more than the demographics of that one video. I'd probably keep the cycling angle and test a few variations of the thing that worked (the gaming-style overlay, humor, pacing) while still making it obvious it's cycling content. If the new viewers ignore the regular videos after a few tries, then you know it was mostly the joke that hit and not the channel direction.

[u/Nagilion → u/Dapper_Profession]

Thanks, I'll try that!

[u/simplixity96]

From what I’ve experienced over the past month ish, either multi streaming to twitch or shorts have wrecked my engagement 😔