And TheQuadSpot interviewed me for a surprisingly polished show for amateurs. Watch. Again it’s free.
Seriously I’m just going to blog about myself for a while. It’s what bloggers do, right? I had a chicken sandwich on Weight Watchers bread. I’m down more than 20 pounds since I shot The Unlicensed Therapist. As Zipster08 might have said: I was doughy, mkay?
I appeared on MSNBC’s “Your Business” yesterday, and again tomorrow morning. It was a special about using online video to promote your business. Here’s me holding my book, Beyond Viral, upside down. Classy touch, right? It, um, was… on purpose. Right.
I’m on Clicker. Don’t know how I got there, but that means you can search for me using Clicker, and watch me on the giant monitor you call an HDTV. I even asked the peeps at Quicker if I could customize my “show” banner (below).
So put down that laptop and join the 113 of us who are using our television sets like big fancy online-video viewers. And if you’re reading this from your web television, we are most impressed. Comment below using your remote control or a toaster or something.
Clicker is “one part directory, one part search engine, one part wiki, one part entertainment guide, and one part DVR.” You can download it on your iPhone or Android, or watch it at Clicker.tv. I’m not shilling them. I learned about it just this week, and its database contains 1,000,000 episodes, from over 12,000 shows, from over 2,500 networks, 30,000 movies, and 90,000 music videos from 20,000 artists. Based on that volume, I think I can safely assume there’s something worse than my videos.
TV, friends. It’s the new web video.
Happy Christmas!
Thanks to Think Media TV and Life in Student Ministry for reviewing my book, Beyond Viral, and how the tips can help non-profits, charities and ministries not just corporate promotions. It’s nice to hear how Sean and Tim (their YouTube accounts linked by name) are using my book for good not evil. 🙂
Click below image to hear what parts of the books they found useful for non-profits and faith-based education. I’m really excited to think about the book helping such worthy causes as the spiritual development of kids.
Thanks also to Buddha Charlie for documenting his purchase of the book!
I’ve had only been a few days on YouTube as exciting as today! I finally made a cameo as MR. KNIFE GUY on Annoying Orange, the show created by Daneboe/Gagfilms.
Honestly I find it more rewarding appearing in a video by someone I admire, than making my own videos. Dane sent me the script last weekend, and I spent the better part of Saturday trying to “sharpen” my acting skills for this “cut up.” My four children adore the show, and I’ve missed two e-mails from Dane inviting me for a guest spot. Thanks to everyone who ensured I didn’t miss this shot- stalkerofnalts, wifeofnalts.
I think that’s going to be my new mission… see how many cameos I can snag in my favorite shows. If iJustine can be a corpse on Criminal Minds, I can be a dead guy on College Humor or The Onion, right?
Be sure to check out Annoying Orange if you haven’t seen the web series. Dane is featured in my book, and has in just a year taken this character to the 11th most-subscribed of all time on YouTube with nearly 300 million views. I was also psyched to see two other folks I’ve had the pleasure of meeting… BobJenz (Punchy) as ginger and Peter Coffin as the song writer of Mr. Knife Guy. It rocks.
The law, friends. Take out your #2 pencils and steno pads. You’re about the learn The Nalts/Murphy “Inverse Creation & Consumption” Law. And you can get a free copy of my book, which doubles as a decorative monitor stand.
The gal pictured above — contorted like a memorable scene from Exorcist — is journalist, speaker and author Daisy Whitney, and she’s giving out 3 copies of my book if you tweet with #beyondviral. I’ll match it by giving away 4 copies of Beyond Viral via Amazon, and give you through Friday, Sept. 24. She wants you to tweet with #beyondviral on why you’d like the book. I’m giving out 4 copies to the funniest tweets with #beyondviral.
In related viralility news, PC World Magazine recently provided us with the well-kept secrets to producing a viral video. Writer Christopher Null “ferreted out the top themes that make a video go viral.”
The secret sauce? Singing, dancing, injury, animals, medications, babies, hysteria, parody and remixes. How’d the Amazon/Woot video do on those criteria?
Lest I get cynical about the methodology that drove Null’s ferreting, I should echo his disclaimer that chance plays a role: “It’s art, luck, and, usually, a lot of simple stupidity.”
I hope people realize that when I proclaim “viral is dead” (see mini-educational video on beyondviral.com), I’m not saying that we’ve seen our last viral videos. Heavens, no. As long as we humans possess a collective desire to share in an unusual experience, we’ll have videos that “go viral” like eager germs. I’m just saying that marketers, brands and advertisers are better off not chasing the viral dream… and instead do some things that will work by orders of magnitude more exponentially (take that, mathematician editors). That’s the point of my book.
Wait– that’s the point of you reading the book. The point of me writing the book was to learn you something, sell more copies than Steve Garfield’s Get Seen, artificially impress people, and accelerate my career as a public speaker in the marketing and digital circuits (I had to disclose that because the kids are saying transparency is all the rage in social-media these days).
It’s almost time to soak in the latest “This Week in Media” podcast show 201 titled Beyond Viral. But first let me introduce my Nalts/Murphy’s “The Inverse Creation & Consumption” Law. All web content will be consumed inversely to the time you spend creating it. Let’s rank these four in order of time spent creating: 1) The book, 2) The episode of “This Week in Media,” 3) the blog post you’re reading, 4) this video I’m about to do about this blog post. Now let’s review them in order of views/consumption: 1) the video, 2) this blog post, 3) TWIM and 4) the book. See how it works?
You can find the “Beyond Viral” episode on iTunes or stream it from Pixel Corps. Daisy Whitney and Tim Street co-pilot the weekly podcast (Clayton Morris joins them sometimes), and guests include Lon Seldman (Local Online News TV) and… me. Gammit my hyperlink fingers hurt. Dogs bark, phones ring, connections drop… entertaining all 7 listeners – eight if you just tuned in. It’s like college radio, only you might learn something — especially from Tim Street. Tim’s that guy you knew in highschool whose humor might distract you from his genius. In this episode he’s dialing in from an app convention you’d not otherwise know about but for him. He says you’re gonna have to start paying more for bandwidth, so put that on your worry shelf.
If you have the patience, you’ll eventually hear me curse Verizon’s bandwidth problems as the company coincidentally breaks up my voice-over IP connection… little bastards. I’m listening to my creative use of the English language as I type, goodly. Before the show taped yesterweek, I made up an acronym about how to engage via online video: DAISY. What’s it stand for? I don’t remember. But if you have ears and the will, you’ll discover that you can’t show up to a cocktail party, take off your shirt and hand out your business cards. It’s not polite, says Street, who describes seagull YouTubing in the podcast. You also don’t need to smash rocks to make fire if there are bic lighters hanging around. But hey I respect your space, man. Rocks are fun.
Speaking of birds, Mockingbirds is Daisy’s new book- it’s fiction and it’s about date rape. Mockingbirds addresses a heavy topic, but Daisy hopes it will encourage kids and parents to discuss the topic… If that stops one date rape, I’m guessing she’ll be happy. Check Mockingbirds out on Amazon. If you don’t buy… it then you’re pro date rape.
I’m meeting Daisy and Axis of Comedy‘s Paul Kontonis in NYC tomorrow. I wonder if Paul will bring his book to the sall-on. Still time to get to Kinkos, Kontonis. (You may remember these little sweethearts from such films as “Uninvisible Man“). The inverse creation/consumption rule applied here… it took about an hour to make and was seen more than a million times. By contrast, my claymation “Butter Attack” took an entire day, and has been seen 50K times.
Do you need a final example of The Law? Scary Maze is my most-viewed video and I spent less time making it than you took reading this post. Gum Tree should be my most popular, even though I’ve probably spent 20 hours on any of my 1000 plus video buried under piles of farts. The law, friends.
Trying to become more popular on Facebook, or promote your Facebook channel, brand or page?
This short “how-to” instructional video contains everything you need to know about having a robust, quality base of friends on Facebook and other forms of social media. It was created by the accomplished author of “The Stupidest Article on Social Media Ever” so you know it’s advice worth following.
The trick here is to be totally transparent about your intent (to make loads of friends), yet not appear desperate. Appearing desperate in social media, my friends, is a turn-off. Hold your head up high, and people will be attracted to your charisma, leadership and wisdom.
Done watching? Get your ass over to Facebook and “like” this damned page, then send a friend request to Kevin “Nalts” Nalty because there’s a friggin’ cap at 5,000.
Until today, WillVideoForFood didn’t have a “Greatest Corporate Social-Media Collapse” Award, but it’s now going to the uncontested “winner.”
Best Buy, a company once known for its savvy social-media presence spearheaded by Barry Judge (seen below, searching Monster.com for jobs at Circuit City), has gone from great to mediocre to embarrassing… in just a few months.
Perhaps someone with the time and patience to run some social-media monitoring analysis can use a quantitative tool to validate Best Buy/Geek Squad’s sentiment decline (a free one, Radian6 or some others listed here). But here are three recent and vivid examples of a company whose arrogance — demonstrated by aggressive attorneys, PR apathy, and poor employee relations — has made it the undisputed 2010 winner (or loser). I’m sure someone else can better document numerous other episodes that precede and follow these, but here is what WVFF judges used to base their decision:
1) Geek Squad Driver Calls Cops on YouTuber: A Geek Squad (Best Buy’s beloved repair team) van driver spotted this blogger and video creator shooting some b-roll of a van. My intent? To make a parody of a technical repair superhero responding to absurd computer requests (can you fix my cup holder? Oh that’s a CD-ROM drive?). The video, which might have been a humorous and free consumer-generated advertisement for Geek Squad, instead resulted in this… seen by a quarter of a million viewers. The driver called the police and “Nalts” got a fine for reckless driving.
Hey I’m biased here, but you know that. I’m part of the story, and wasn’t thrilled to get pulled over and fined because a Geek Squad driver got paranoid (perhaps he feared I was doing a video expose on his wicked speeding). Sensing his unease, at a red light I handed him my business card, smiled, and explained my video concept. The NJ police officer said the driver interpreted that as threatening gesture and dangerous. Really? But we can forgive a company for a freaky driver, but it was poor form for Best Buy to ignore me. I wrote the company’s PR group, and a simple apology would have probably brought me right back. Did I mention I captured that driver again two weeks ago? I think he was selling ice-cream and crack cocaine this time, but don’t quote me on that.
2) Best Buy Intimidates Employee for Parody Video With No Mention of Creator’s Employer: Then there was poor Brian Maupin, a Best Buy employee who was fired (or as Best Buy would prefer you conclude: was suspended, rehired, and quit under duress) for this funny “iPhone vs HTC Evo” video seen by 7 million. The video didn’t mention the creator worked for Best Buy, and there’s this whole “freedom of speech” thing that Best Buy’s social-media policy seems to have forgotten. But Maupin knew the event undermined his chances to ascend to Assistant to the Regional Store Manager.
3) Geek Squad Sues Catholic Priest. Now the Geek Squad is protecting its rapidly-depreciating Geek Squad trademark (see undercover expose) by suing a priest who created a God Squad logo (readers of The National Catholic Register will no doubt boycott the store). While we understand trademark vigilance, we believe this Wisconsin Priest (Father Luke Strand) might have been handled with a bit more diplomacy, and Geek.com agrees… calling it a “PR nightmare.” Yeah, when a corporation sues a priest… Catholics (and there are a few of us) aren’t going to be thinking about trademarks when we go elsewhere for our electronics.
Please comment below… and I invite anyone to defend each of Best Buy’s actions. It’s hard to give up on a company you love, and I’ve seen some interesting debates on various articles and blogs. I’d also like to invite anyone to join me on a 2010 boycott of Best Buy. There’s even a Facebook page to boycott Best Buy (apparently they fund anti-gay politics). I haven’t walked into the store since the po-po pulled me over, and the Maupin story gave me more resolve. But now they’re messing with a Priest? I read the Best Buy circular weekly, and never went more than 10 days without shopping there. But I’m done with the store for 2010. We’ll see if Barry or a well-meaning public-relations firm can turn this around, and revisit them in 2011.
Hey at least I have a great case study for the sequel to Beyond Viral (now available for pre-order on Amazon). Did I mention Amazon also sells electronics?
Sorry this blog has been dark. I fell asleep for 5 days. Here’s a sneak preview of my book, Beyond Viral. You can preorder it. I already ordered two copies, and plan to give them 5-star ratings that say things like “best book I’ve ever read,” and “I’m buying a copy for everyone on my team.”