Last week The Wall Street Journal published a thoughtful piece by Julia Angwin entitled “Recipe for a Successful Viral Video Campaign.” The article begins by discussing the increasing difficulty of marketing on YouTube, and the unique difficulty of achieving repeat “viral video hits” on YouTube. The illustrative example used is Judson Laipply’s famous “Evolution of Dance” clip: while Jud’s first vid has received over 114 million views, his sequel — for which he’s spent tens of thousands of dollars in supportive marketing — has so far only generated 4 million views.
Ian Schafer, chief executive at the visionary agency Deep Focus, put it this way in the article: “”If you just upload to YouTube, it’s like dropping a grain of sand on the beach.”
What’s the fix here? How can a company’s content compete against the 150,000+ new videos that are uploaded to YouTube each day?
The WSJ article makes the great point that digital marketers should focus more on building loyal fan bases around their video content — communities of enthusiastic viewers that they can engage and mobilize over the long term. The main blocker here, of course, is figuring out how to build this community from the ground-up.
In YouTube’s world, the community-building paradigm depends heavily on the user-subscribe call-to-action — i.e., “Click the yellow button to subscribe to my videos.” That, and hoping that viewers will email a YouTube link to their friends.
Contrast this with social networks and branded applications on social networks, where the community builder’s toolbox is bigger and better. To underscore this point, here’s a comparison list:
Primary tools for short-term viral growth:
- YouTube: Person-to-person email; messages to subscribers; exposure on YouTube’s top videos pages (assuming the video in question is seen and spread widely right away).
- Social networks and applications on social networks: Person-to-person direct messages; person-to-person invites; blast-out messages and notifications to campaign/app members; video and link exposure on individual profile feeds; video and link exposure on News Feeds (Facebook); targeted video syndication on other applications.
Primary tools for long-term and repeat community engagement (campaign owner-to-viewer):
- YouTube: Messages to subscribers; changes to channel and video page content (e.g., posting of a new “Featured Video”).
- Social networks and applications on social networks: Blast-out messages and notifications to campaign/app members; continual campaign exposure through feed stories; incentives for repeat participation via virtual points systems and campaign leaderboards; identification tools for influencer targeting and segmentation (e.g., *contact only my California supporters* — certain social network tools offer this kind of refined communication).
Ultimately, the fortunate thing is that digital marketers usually don’t have to be too exclusive in choosing their distribution mechanisms. So: Make a YouTube channel. Establish a presence on Twitter. Create a video microsite. Express and strengthen your brand identity on the major social networks. But throughout all of this, always make sure to keep in mind the relative payoffs. And in turn ask the right questions: Where do I have the best chance of turning a viewer into an enthusiast? Where are my target audiences spending their time, and how can I identify and then reach them? Where, at the end of the day, should I focus on building my real fan base?
Nice Post!!! LOL