Oh well maybe, should I hold one?
Yeah.
Beyond Viral. It’s almost as good as Get
Seen. This was like years in the making. And
I just wanted to squeeze like five years of
experience into something that can hopefully
help marketers and entrepreneurs and creators
figure out the secrets of YouTube and other
online video.
Everybody is going for the big viral you know,
playing viral roulette. And I think there
are more creative plays you can engage in
online video. So the idea is to kind of take
them beyond, hoping that one video goes viral
and really think about better strategy.
There’s no magical secret sauce but the
basics to get your video seen. If you look
at the most popular YouTube videos, you’ve
got dancing, singing, some surprise, pets.
You know babies work really well. And the
most important thing is to do something different
and unique.
The trick is not to sort of borrow off another
viral idea and hope to go viral because you
kind of already missed that. And you also
want to do something with a bit of a twist.
I think that if you can at the end of the
video turn the tables a bit on the viewer,
they’re more likely to send it on.
Initially, we heard the same thing from marketers
that people were saying about the Web a decade
ago. They were afraid it was the wild, wild
west. I don’t want to be around cats with
skateboards and that’s slowly changing.
It is starting to be seen as a legitimate
place for advertising.
But what’s even better is that some of the
savvy marketers are tapping into web stars
to get their message in the show. Because
we’re kind of preprogrammed to ignore advertising
and yet, every media buyer wants to come back
to their brand and say, “Hey look, I’ve
reached this many CPMs and we’re on plan.”
The brand guy is saying, “Yeah, but I just
want to sell my product.” So that’s sort
of the tension.
But the web stars had huge followings and
shame on us as marketers if we’re not taking
advantage of that and compensating them for
it. This is a challenge is that you want to
be a steward of the brand and the brand identity,
you have to flex a little bit for the medium
but you don’t want to stray from your essence
of brand.
So you wouldn’t want to see a luxury brand
go goofy. Maybe a little bit irreverent so
that’s one challenge. The other thing is
people are trying to hide that they’re advertising.
Hopefully that’s pretty clear that you want
to be transparent and acknowledge that you’re
advertising.
But now I mean there have been some viral
flops. Mostly because people spend too much
money on creating something in the hopes that
a ton of people view it. So I advocate that
you keep cost down. Throw a lot of spaghetti
on the wall and see what sticks.
So to me the question ought not be should
we put this content up on YouTube, the question
is why wouldn’t you? Even if you got it
on your own website, I would say get it up
on YouTube, tag the heck out of it. If you
have to transcribe the whole piece and put
in a description, you’re allowed a lot of
content. And it’s cheap. It’s cheap to
get up on Google. If you google “fart”,
you’ll find my video. And I optimize for
search constantly because it’s a great source
of traffic.
An important part of an SEO strategy is get
your content on YouTube. You know optimize
it on your own site where you’d rather them
see it but it’s a heck of a lot easier to
do it on YouTube. You don’t want to be seagull
dropping just using YouTube as a distribution
channel. So this is an important part of seeding
which part of that is just letting media and
bloggers know that your contents up there.
Part of it is to a degree optimizing.
But the big thing that took me from getting
a few hundred views to be in one of the YouTube
top whatever is just actively participating
in the community. And you can’t fake that
and you can’t rush that. So to me, seeding
is reacting to other YouTube content.
I think we saw that well done with the Old
Spice campaign where custom content for YouTube
in reaction to other people, that’s a really
smart…
So think about distribution even before you
shoot the video. Is this something that we
think can compel people to write about them
and share? Don’t just hope that hosting
it will you know, it will pop. It’s a shame
when brands try one or two things, put it
up, get no views, and abandon online video
when if you just stay with it and you’re
a trusted member of the community. And some
of the brands that are here have done that.
They’re welcome members of the YouTube community.
They’re not seen as people that just ad
bomb and distribute content. They’re sponsoring
web stars. They’re supporting events and
that makes a big difference.