So you want to be a hit on YouTube. Well, its harder than you think. It’s actually quite sobering to think that the chances of you winning the lottery is higher than your video going viral on YouTube.  In fact just garnering 10,000 views is an admirable feat! I just learned this stuff from a Slate magazine article written by Chris Wilson.  Here is an excerpt:

This is the great promise of YouTube: Your video can soar in popularity through sheer word-of mouth-or rather, click-of-mouth-until eventually people are making T-shirts about it. No one ever said this was going to happen for everyone. So, what are your chances of achieving YouTube stardom? I crunched the numbers to find out what percentage of YouTube videos hit it big, cracking even 10,000 or 100,000 views. The results: You might have better odds playing the lottery than of becoming a viral video sensation.

So, Charlie Bit Me is quite special after all!

By the time March rolls around in Colorado everyone is sick and tired of the cold. “How do yo know?” you ask.  O.k., while I’ve never lived in Colorado to personally experience it. However, I did live in Wisconsin for seven years. So, believe me, by March you want out! At least I did when I lived in Madison.

So if you’re one of those in Colorado dying to get out of the cold, here is your chance. The Tempe Convention and Visitor Bureau is organizing a thumbs video contest and the lucky winner get a free trip to Tempe, Arizona in March! The grand prize includes (but is not limited to) two FREE round-trip tickets, a  three days/two nights stay at the Tempe Residence Inn by Marriott and, tickets to spring training games in the area. In case you didn’t catch it, that is just he beginning of the prize list. Details of the entire prize package is posted on their website, where you can also register for the contest.

How do you enter you ask? Well, simply make a funny video of your thumbs (see example below) explaining why you deserve a trip to Tempe. Upload the video to YouTube (add the video to the Tempe Thumbs group page) and register. That’s it. Winners will be announced on March 9th!. Good luck.

By the way if you’re a blogger in the Colorado area feel free to pass this information along t0 your readers. Unless of course you want to enter and increase your chances of winning by keeping the news to yourself.  Shame on you. But I understand!

Disclaimer: My employer AIR Markeitng worked with Tempe Convention and Visitors Bureau to develop this video contest. I am blogging to spread the word.

“We now have indisputable proof that online marketing, YouTube and Twitter and all that it encompasses is meaningful and has arrived,” said Gene Grabowski, chair of the crisis and litigation practice at Levick Strategic Communications. “We are seeing real consequences to a mistake. If [social networks] didn’t matter, you wouldn’t see this type of reaction from J&J or consumers.”

Once again The Onion reads our mind with a news magazine segment called “YouTube Contest Challenges Users To Make A ‘Good’ Video”:

YouTube Contest Challenges Users To Make A ‘Good’ Video

I attended my first PodCamp this past weekend, and had a great time. Actually to say it was a great experience is a severe understatement, the experience was very good for me. Unfortunately due to some personal considerations I was not able to be there for the full two days, but I did attend half days each day. The best part of the experience was of course meeting social media enthusiasts from all over (Flickr Pics). The community is so vibrant and the personalities so rich it was a refreshing. It was also very good to see how vibrant the local Phoenix community is when it comes to social technology usages and participation.

Naturally, the two day event was jammed packed with loads of information sessions. It was very difficult trying to figure out which session to attend, since so many were appealing. Given the awesome choices, I attended the following sessions:

• “The Audacity of Podcasting: Tips for producing and editing your audio podcast with free software” by Dan Feierabend
• “So you want to make money with your podcast? Now what?” by, Nicole and Marc Spagnuolo
• “Podtaint: Fame in the New Media World” by, Jack Mangan
• “Stranger, Meet Strangers” by, Brian Shaler

One presentation I wish I had the time to attend was by Pamela Slim, “How to strike a balance between sharing information freely and making a living using New Media.” I was really looking forward to hear her speak but things didn’t quite work out that way on my schedule.

On Sunday morning, I had my own presentation on “Integrating Social Media to Traditional Marketing”.  In this presentation I discussed how social media needs to be integrated into your overall marketing plan and can not be viewed in isolation anymore. Many companies are struggling to achieve this integration but those that have are seeing a lot of success. The discussion among those who attended was really amazing and to be honest with you I learned from those in the audience in that one hour time frame. The participation was lively enough that some folks continued the conversation afterward in a different room. For those interested here is my PowerPoint presentation:

PodCampAz organizers and volunteers deserve a great round of applause for their hard work in putting this together. Their hard work was evident in the success of the conference.

The popularity of user generated videos seems to have found a pretty creative niche in Live Internet Weddings. I came across this company while watching YouTube videos from Turtle Bay Resort in Hawaii. The concept is pretty simple. For the price of an airline ticket you can hire them to broadcast your wedding live via the Internet to relatives and friends unable to make your wedding. The video is then made available online for up to three months and they also make a DVD for your archives.

Pretty neat concept. Below is a sample. It is a beach wedding held at Turltle Bay Resort which Live Internet Weddings broadcast and then later posted:

Another video I found pretty interesting was Turtle Bay Resort: Pavilion Wedding & Sunset Room Reception. Same idea, different wedding.

These videos of course offer great opportunity for a resort such as Turtle Bay, considering that user created video is one of the most popular content categories in social media. eMarketer is estimating that user generated videos will receive 34 billion views in 2008 this is up from 22 billion in 2007.

CEO’s can blog too. Even CEO’s of large multi-national corporations with global name brand recognition and revenue comparable to small nations. And in many ways blogging is a lot more effective when the person at the top of the organization starts to engage people on the web. Not only will there be a positive impact among customers, but there should be a profoundly positive change throughout the organization. As an example, I personally, would be interested in reading CEO blogs of companies such as MicroSoft, ExxonMobile, CitiGroup etc.wouldn’t you? To hear the inner thoughts of the the guy charging $4.00 a gallon for gas? That would be great reading every morning.

Don’t despair though. Things may be changing and it comes form the travel industry, Williard Marriott’s blog. Mr. Marriott is the President and CEO of the hotel chain, Marriott, which also bears his name. I found by way of Barry Hurd at 123 Social Media and I mention that becuase Barry has some very thoughtful insights on his blog and also regarding CEO blogging in general. Particularly when he talks about executives needing to lead by example.

Going back to Bill’s blog I particularly like how he weaves in business topics, customer stories, and his personal life into the blog. This combination makes for a very human picture and creates a more powerful brand image. All round powerful in my humble opinion. For example, consider his thoughts on man’s best friend:

I’ve learned that impetuous actions are not always the best way to go. Murphy has acquired wisdom through the years – he no longer chases the ducks he can’t catch. And I hope that, like Murphy, I’ve gained a little wisdom too.

A reminder that even the CEO of Marriott has things in perspective when it comes to this journey called life.

Bill’s blog was recently featured on a MSNBC segment discussing the popularity of blogs:

Another notable CEO or high level exec blog is GM’s Fast Lane where high level execs like Bob Lutz are active contributers

To counter the argument that some people are simply too busy to blog, I wanted to highlight a particularly high profile individual who happens to prolifically blog. He is the current Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt.

Recently he has been blogging about his trip to the Yakutat Tingit Clinic in Alaska and it’s not a stiff style of writing with a very partisan streak either. He actually comes across in an easy going manner and demonstrates a keen sense of intellect. Scanning through I see that his topics range from Africa and AHIC to Traditional Medicine and Web/Tech. There are pictures, personal anecdotes and much much more. A very engaging blog indeed.

In fact Angelo Fernando has some details on what the Secretary said on a recent webcast. Some quotable quotes:

“I speak my mind. I am just not reckless about it.”

“My blog is not a literary masterpiece –that is not my goal.”

“I choose the topic – not a reporter.”

So, there you have it. If a cabinet secretary who is twelfth in line to be President of the United States of America can find time to blog, than anyone can. It’s a matter of will!

Viral videos can be a great way to introduce your work to a new audience. There are videos which have made the rounds on Internet and have achieved millions in views. The most notable recent example is the BlendTec “Will it Blend” videos. With creativity, marketing savvy and a very clear cut message, BlendTec has been able to introduce its brand to over 5 million people in a very short period of time.  This is an astounding achievement in my estimation, considering how little the company spent to put the videos together.

Developing a video in the hopes that it will go viral is very difficult. Part of the challenge is you’re counting on viewers to pass on the video to their sphere of influence – and there is no real way for you to be able to influence this action other than by the video itself. Clever content is a good start but you also have to make sure it’s easy to forward the video – either the link or the content itself.

In many ways, what people pass on is a matter of personal taste and preference. While I think funny videos get passed on more than others, I don’t’ think a video has to be funny to be passed on. Content that is sufficiently out of the ordinary seems to go viral as often as funny ones.

I recently came across the blog “No Permission” which documented how a certain on of their videos went viral. Here is how he says the entire thing got started:

A couple of weeks after I had posted, a friend sent me an IM “Hey, you never stumbled Nanny”. He meant that I’d never given the video a thumbs up via the StumbleUpon browser plugin. StumbleUpon is a social network / link sharing site, in which your friends in your network see sites you’ve given a thumbs up, and vice versa. We’ve had some success using this and other similar sites, and I usually Stumble a new video post on YouTube as a matter of course. I use YouTube as the preferred Stumble site because it’s the most popular video site, and a video there benefits more from a greater view total than on any other site.

In any case, my friend Stumbled the site, and I immediately seconded it. The seconding serves two purposes, one it’s a vote of confidence in the first Stumble, which makes it more likely to be seen by others, and two it combines my stumble network with my friend’s, increasing the number of people the video can be exposed to.

Nanny caught on with the Stumble crowd, and racked up a number of views from people Stumbling on the page over the next couple of days.

But then the big step happened- the video got added to the FunWall application on Facebook. Someone, likely one of the Stumblers, started “forwarding” the video via FunWall, and the view count really took off.

I encourage anyone interested in making viral videos to read the full post. Here are some of the takeaways I came up with after reading it several times:

1. Submit your video to Stumbleupon since its more attuned for videos
2. Video receives greater exposure once a second submission is received (vote of confidence)
3. Post on Facebook FunWall (reduces link friction – ease of passing links on)
4. Distribute email attachment version
5. Once you reach critical mass traditional media will pick it up increasing exposure even further

Of course this is only one example and the whole thing would have been a failure if the content had not been so compelling, but this is a very useful case study. I was also struck by how proactive you have to promote your content so as to feed the frenzy (if there is one).

Picture courtesy of foreversouls.