Tag Archives: views

Online Video

How Many Views Do You Need to Be Viral?

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A few years ago, a video could be considered “viral” if it hit a million views. Now I’d like to propose a more stringent definition, and tell you that President Obama meets the criteria.

A video, I submit, is “viral” if it gets more than 5 million views in a 3-7 day period. So Obama getting more than 6 million views in a week is indeed viral. You are correct, Michael Memoli. However many of your peers talk about videos going viral without really considering the competition… many top YouTubers get more videos in a day than what media considers a viral sensation.

One caveat, however. Part of what makes a video “viral” is not just the views but the degree of discussion online and offline (media). Here we get into a “chicken and the egg” issue, since the video’s viral nature may prompt “coverage,” which inspires even more views (although less than you’d think). Most views are driven by online activity not television or print coverage.

 

Online Video, popular videos, Viral Video, YouTube

Find Viral Videos Before They’re Viral

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If you're just finding out about the "exploding whale" or "Friday, Friday" you may need this post.
If you're just finding out about the "exploding whale" or "Friday, Friday" you may need this post.

Remember that video curation was supposed to be all the rage last year and 2011? I’m still not seeing it get enough attention, but that will change as online-video consumption moves from desktop to simpler devices: mobile and remote controls. Why? Sans keyboard, it’s just not as easy to self-select videos, so we’ll need simpler controls (more Roku/AppleTV, less Sony’s 400-button, 2-dial TV remote control) … and better aggregators.

The answer lies in a careful mix of three (3) important variables:

  • crowdsourced (liked people like me),
  • editorial (someone whose taste I share) and
  • personalized recommendations based on my history/preferences.

In the meantime, I’ll offer a few favorite places that are directionally close, and invite you to add yours in comments (it’s participation time). Together we can perhaps create an aggregation of aggregators. A curation of curators. Then we’ll create a big ass website that collects them all, and we’ll sell $1 CPM banners on them and become hundredairs.

  • Reddit Videos: The kids at Reddit have good taste. Period. I want to be a Reddit influencer when I grow up.
  • There's no contextual purpose of this photo. I just wanted to get your attention and remind you to list any good places where you discover videos before they're cliches.

    Viral Video Chart is a good way to ensure you aren’t missing anything as vital as the “si, si, si, aquí” kid.

  • ReelSEO’s Jeremy Scott found some good pre-viral sources months ago, so check his list too. It includes:
    • Buzzfeed (see the “going viral” page),  the hiccupporcupine is going viral),
    • Devour (I wasn’t captivated on that one) and
    • Popscreen (which is kinda cool because you can search “now,” 7 days” and “30 days”).
  • eGuiders is a curated site, and I think I am/was an editor. But I forgot.
  • Martin Michalik pulls together the most viral videos on Viral Blog’s “Viral Friday.” At least you’ll know what to talk about on the weekend.
  • Zocial charts videos that are trending in social tweets/posts (Twitter, Facebook). Unfortunately I’d already seen most of what surfaced here.
  • YouTube Charts is a hidden gem on the website. It’s getting harder not easier to find recently popular videos, and instead becoming more “channel and theme” focused. But here’s YouTube “live” and here’s the page that should be more obvious on the website: the “chart” page which allows you to custom rank videos by category (humor, music), by period (day, week, month, all time) and finally by feature (most-viewed, highest rated, most liked).
One of the most valuable functions on YouTube ("charts") is hard to find

And don’t forget that if you’re a bit behind on your memes (viral ideas, behaviors, images, styles), there’s always “Know Your Meme” to catch up. It might not help you understand Jessica Black’s “Friday,” but at least provides some analysis.

If this is the last viral video you remember, then you're on the wrong blog.

P.S. If all else fails, you can check out my crap, watch “webcam girl fail,” or just piss off a few hours watching the stuff too “blue” for America’s Funniest Videos at Failblog.

advertising, Online Video, Viral Video, YouTube

20 Free Tips to Get Your Videos Seen on YouTube and Beyond

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It’s been a while since I’ve summarized some of the most important factors to getting your videos seen. This post is based on my own YouTube creator experience, my work with big brands, and my book (Beyond Viral). I’ve also written a free eBook called “How to Get Popular on YouTube Without Any Talent (version 2).”

Here it is:

How To Get Popular on YouTube (free eBook, version 2)

I’m sure I missed some current best practices so please add your own thoughts below!

1. Hook viewer in first 10 seconds (teasing highlights)
2. Keep it short. A one-minute video will almost always trump a 3.
3. Encourage interactions- get people commenting and, like Facebook, your YouTube video will rise higher. Controversial questions to viewers can jolt views.
4. Personalize it. Look at camera as if it’s a friend’s eyes and don’t assume your viewer knows you.
5. Include real laughter. Laughter induces laughter like yawns influence yawns. Get a sidekick who has a contagious laugh.
6. At the end, provide something unexpected or bedbug. See how you didn’t expect the word “bedbug” there?
7. Include animals. We humans like animals more than humans. Babies are clinchers too. Giggling baby with an animal? Golden.
8. Take the “road less travelled.” Sure, boobies get views but if you base your video on something already seen, your video is less likely to break through clutter. Show us something we’ve not seen (or rare to see) and people will share.
9. Real trumps script. Almost all of my top videos are not scripted bits but real, candid moments.
10. Appeal to heavy video viewers. Teenagers drive significant views, and even adolescents and Tweens (Annoying Orange). Test your video on this audience and note when they laugh or get bored.
11. Post regularly. The most popular and most-viewed YouTubers post daily or on a predictable schedule. Fresh outsells good.
12. Flow with current events. Selectively parody topical news or “Memes” and you’ll be topical and more relevant.
13. Take the title, tags and description very seriously so your video can be found easily on search engines like Google (and don’t think YouTube isn’t a search engine). You can even transcribe the video and add the text. Important terms: “how to,” “why does,” “who is,” “when is…”
14. Watch top creators for new ideas. For instance, most top web stars are providing thumbnails of other videos at the end of their video. This keeps a viewer from wandering off to “related videos.”
15. Post at right time. Stay away from weekends and Friday afternoon (when there’s a lot of viewing but heavy competition). Mornings are good and Tuesday is a heavy consumption day.
16. Someone once said a new blogger focuses on their blog, but a seasoned blogger is roaming. Likewise you want to appear in videos by people getting more views. The kind plug by PrankvsPrank for my recent “Itchy Butt” prank drove more views that from my base of 250K subscribers.
17. Chill out on “subscribers,” which is as meaningless as “likes” on Facebook. 100 fans are more valuable than 10,000 subscribers that accidentally subscribed from the stupid “box for box” feature (where if you subscribe to one channel you can passively subscribe to their friends.
18. Jump start views on other social-media channels like Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr and Reddit (watch out for being seen as just tooting your own horn though).
19. Listen and talk back to your audience. When a creator acknowledges a viewer comment a bond is formed that is the lifeblood of a recurring audience.
20. Go for quantity not obsessive quality. I could never have predicted which of my 1000 videos would get tens of millions of views, and there’s a lot of power to trial and error. There’s almost an inverse relationship between the time I spend on a video and the views it gets.

Finally don’t judge success by total views alone. Whether you’re a marketer or entertainer, not all views are created equally. Focus on engagement, comments, view duration, and getting to the right audience. A niche show meeting an unmet need is going to work more effectively than trying to please broad audiences.

What did I miss? Obviously the most popular videos are those involving dancing, music, comedy, satire, politics, sex, babies and animals. Don’t underestimate the power of the thumbnail (image representing the video) too. But any general tips I missed?

Online Video

Online-Video Changes: Facebook Growing, Pro-Content Attracting Ad Dollars

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comScore’s February data once again shows Google’s dominance in the online-video market, but Facebook is catching up. It’s now the fourth-largest online-video sharing property (see Facebook’s unofficial resource for more information). Facebook, as a sharp contrast from other sites, has short bursts of viewing (far shorter durations than other properties like YouTube, Hulu or Viacom (see BroadbandTV report).

comScore has a nice presentation that shows the “radical” growth of the medium (see download), and the total people relative to streams. It seems that the longer format of professional content (basically TV shows streamed online) is attracting a greater portion of advertising today.

Growth of streams and peeps from 2006 through 2010 (comScore)

To me, the most interesting part of this report is the acknowledgement that advertising dollars aren’t keeping up with the increase in online-video viewing. While this is probably true for the dawn of every preceding medium (radio, television, internet), it does suggest media buyers are in need of additional adjustments of the “media mix.” This requires better planning, and more creative built for the channel.

The ad budgets aren't keeping pace with online-video consumption

Because media-buying agencies (representing top brands) are more comfortable with television, it’s no surprise that Hulu is serving more ads per minute streamed. It’s familiar content and an easier format. Of course advertisers should be looking not just for “comfort” and targeting, but also “reduced clutter.”

Note that YouTube is not leader in advertising delivery (when you look at “ad views”). After Hulu, Tremor Media Video Network ranked second overall (and highest among video ad networks) with 503.7 million ad views, followed by ADAP.TV (432 million) and Microsoft sites (415 million).

Online Video, Video Advertising, Viral Video, YouTube

Teleporting Fat Guy Returns

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How many views does it take for a video to be defined as going “viral”? It’s not 1 million, and it’s not 2 million… read on.

I’m a big fan of Smosh’s Teleporting Fat Guy (see original video seen more than 4 million times). So I was thrilled to see the adorable chubby guy return in the recent episode below.

By the way, I was chatting with Mark Douglas (KeyofAwesome) last week at the Next New Networks office…Oh sorry, did I name drop? While in NYC I also saw iJustine, MysteryGuitarMan, ShaneDawson, ShayCarl and CharlesTrippy (see video proof).

Anyway, Mark and I were discussing what “viral” means anymore, and the number 4 million seems about right. Only a few videos hit that number in the month they’re posted. So let’s go with 4 million as 2010 viral, but that means 4 million views right away- not cumulatively over months or years.

I need to clarify again that my book proclaims “viral is dead” for commercial videos, I do not contend that viral video will ever end. Ever. As long as we humans like to experience something together at the same time, we’ll have viral hits. It’s just that they’ll rarely be advertising videos… and I don’t like to see brands cede their online-video marketing strategy and tactics to “going viral” due to these low odds.

So here’s the teleporting fat guy appearing again, featuring Smosh’s Ian and Anthony traveling forward and back in time, and meeting their future selves. You gotta love Smosh for persisting and persisting with their comedic duo even when their managers sometimes sell ’em out too much. Smosh could pimp Amway and I’d still love ’em.

Wait- was this post about Smosh or about how many views it takes to make a video meet the definition of “viral”? Oh who cares. Just watch the face of Teleporting Fat Guy when he hears about the sponge bath. Hey did I include Smosh in my book? I can’t remember.

Online Video

YouTube Reaches All-Time High

We Americans watched nearly 34 billion videos in May, and 14.6 billion (43 percent) were on YouTube. According to comScore (source: TechCrunch), 144.1 million viewers watched an average of 101.2 videos per viewer in May. Hulu ranked second with 3.5 percent share. The gap between Google and Hulu remains strong, and it’s safe to say you’re watching video on YouTube or… the long tail.

Online Video

The Secret to YouTube Views and Subscribers: Poop Frequency

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Save yourself a lot of time, and ditch my eBook about how to get popular on YouTube. There’s one common denominator to getting regular YouTube views and subscribers. It’s a secret possessed by the regular names we see on YouTube’s most-popular videos of the day. People who retain wildly enthusiastic fans who watch, rate, favorite and forward videos. I once did it (more for my own discipline) and didn’t realize how vital it is.

Frequency. Routine. Post daily. Like you brush your teeth, exercise or poop.

It’s a simple thing, really. When my tagline was “Nalts makes a video everytime you poop,” each of my new videos was seen at least 40-50,000 times. Now I’m intermittent and people simply forget to look.

Sure you could argue that there are other factors. Not everyone that posts daily has views, and not everyone that gets loads of views posts daily. But it’s the single biggest common denominator, and therefore I proclaim it a “best practice.”

Take a look at the people that dominate the “most highly rated,” and tell me something they else have in common besides mostly vlogging and not sketch. They are (in no particular order): Shaytards (aka Shaytard), CTFxC (CharlesTrippy), SxePhil (Phillip DeFranco), WhatTheBuckShow (Michael Buckley), KassemG, Livealivalive, ShaneDawsonTV (and various other channels), CommunityChannel, FailBlog, MichelleFan, and a few more. I’m not hyperlinking their name, because you can find them all here sooner or later (most popular videos of the week on YouTube). There are videos that get more views, but these are the individuals that command a vivid audience.

It makes sense. It’s still a social media, and you can’t be very social if you’re out of mind. I don’t mean to marginalize the talent here. These are gifted people, and it’s not fair to write off their success to frequency. But I hold, as exhibit A, the fact that some of these people had more “packaged” content channels, and their daily vlog channels eclipsed their initial presence.

One exception among them: JimmyKimmelLive. Only 60K subscribers, but lots of recent views. Maybe one day Kimmel will grow up to be a YouTube star.

book, Online Video

Getting Your Videos Seen With Search

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Last week I wrote one of my more seminal posts on the convergence of paid search and video. Those who comment on my blog, of course, are rather indifferent about these vital topics and would just prefer me to stick with such topics as farts and YouTube drama.

Alas, I finally know how our summer Spanish teacher felt when our class (a motley crew of rejects that simply needed a passing grade to graduate) insisted that she play Spanish soap operas and stop trying to teach us vocabulary. For the most part, we’d just put “o” at the end of the word and it would sound sufficiently translated.

That said, I must persist and I have a ruler in my hand. You see, the percentage of video views attributed to search engines is growing rapidly. And I had forgotten sweet ReelSEO which had fallen accidentally on my iGoogle when I took it for a strict SEM blog. It has some great articles on video too. Here’s a recent piece by Michael Bunnell that has some summaries of the “Video Search Engine Optimization” session that took place in San Jose at the SES (search engine strategies) conference.

Check out the comments by Greg Markel, founder of Infuse Creative, LLC. He’s got some nice wisdom, including a remidner to have your killer link in the top of your description as the rest gets truncated. It might help that paultry view-to-click ratio (although I’d expect 1-4 percent tops anyway).

mike abundo with his sassy poseIn related news, Mike Abundo (pictured here in a sassy photo and see his blog here) writes about how marketers and creators may be able to buy YouTube text links on search results to support the SEO techniques Markel suggests.

YouTube

Porn and Whatnot (How to Tag Your Way to the Top!)

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Guest blog by Alan Lastufka (FallofAutumnDistro), video creator, emo, blogger and author of the forthcoming “YouTube: An Insider’s Guide to Climbing the Charts.”

Alan FallofautumndistroWhen uploading a new video to YouTube, or any other video-sharing site, you need to give a few pieces of information to the site because encoding software can’t actually watch your videos. Your title is important for tricking viewers into watching (they’ll think your video will be more interesting than it probably really is). Your description is important for whoring out links and shout-outs to other channels.

But your tags… your tags are where the real magic happens. Your tags are keywords used to place and rank your video within YouTube’s search results.

Even better, just like your video’s title, thumbnail and description, your tags — or keywords associated with your video — can be easily manipulated or gamed! Adding popular search words like “porn,” “sex,” “naked” and “guitar hero” to your video’s tags will give you a bump in views over the long run. In addition to appealing to the fourteen-year-old perverts, you could also include tags from recent popular news stories. Favorites this past week would have been “Bernie”, “Mac” and “RIP.” Users searching for news clips about an actor’s recent death would hopefully find your video waiting for them at the top of the search results.

Most users only tag their own channel name, or repeat the video’s title in their tags section. Get out of this habit now! You could be luring in a much larger audience if you only knew what they were searching for, and including those words in your tags.

For a list of the daily most popular search terms click here: http://google.com/trends

Also, if you’re lucky enough for your video to be monetized, your tags not only help pop your video into popular search results, but may determine which ads are placed beside and within your videos.

If you notice a cell phone company *cough*SamSung Instinct*cough* is spending a lot of money on a site-wide ad campaign, tagging the video with phone, electronics, or the product itself could help pull in some of that sweet Google ad revenue (assuming you’re a YouTube partner).

Okay…I’ve been taking an overly-sarcastic tone throughout this article. All of the above taken into account, it is a good idea for most content creators to make better use of their tags.

But for the love of koolsurfer24, please keep them relevant and appropriate for your video’s content. If your latest video documents your weekend fishing trip, don’t just leave “fishing” as your lone tag, include “boat”, “bait”, “catch”, “release”, “lake”, “fish”, “sport”, “tackle” and everything else related that you can think dream up.

Don’t try to cheat the rankings. Don’t game the system. Gamed views will only leave you feeling empty at the end of the day, can get you kicked off some sites, and at best, will get you a bad rep.

Alan Lastufka is on YouTube, BlogTV and occasionally writes for
his own blog, ViralVideoWannabe. Alan is currently writing a book entitled
“YouTube: An Insider’s Guide to Climbing the Charts” for O’Reilly Media, Inc.