I think it’s because viral does not equal views. Viral is more accurately reflected in the ratio of views to shares.

For example, if 1 million people watch a video but only 1% of them share it, is that video viral, even with it’s 10,000 shares? Not really. But what if another video got 300,000 views where 20% of the viewers shared it for 60,000 shares? That video is viral.

Where this breaks down is determining what that ratio is and how many views a video needs to have before it’s considered viral. Obviously I can upload a video, have my mom watch it once and share it with her friends for a share ratio of 100%. That’s hardly viral.

No one is really sure where that line of demarkation is, which is why we usually measure “viral” in relation to other videos that are presently being shared on charts and such.

If you’ve ever designed a video, website, graphic, brochure, or anything at all for someone else, then you’ll appreciate this cartoon about creative critics. haha

(ht tomfishburne.com)

It’s pretty entertaining to watch and helps us understand better how to plot our own stories when sharing them, whether with online video or on the phone with a friend.

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to shoot a bunch of interviews with Kevin Nalty, the Viral Video Genius of WillVideoForFood.com and author of the book, “Beyond Viral: How to Attract Customers, Promote Your Brand, and Make Money with Online Video.”

Here’s one of those interviews we shot for ReelSEO.com on how to humanize your brand if you’re a company or organization. It’s important to create a human connection with your audience instead of just using online video to post commercials.

I especially enjoy the outtakes at the end. lol

Whenever I talk with online video creators or video SEO guys I’m amazed at how many of them don’t know about the YouTube Creator Playbook. It’s basically YouTube’s official 97 page guide on how to be successful on YouTube and how to dominate their site!

Unlike Google who keeps the secrets of their algorithm locked tightly away from the public, YouTube takes the opposite approach and puts it all out there freely for everyone to see. They tell you exactly what influences the algorithm for search, how to best build an audience, and how to make videos that will work well on their platform. Thanks to the YouTube Creator Playbook, there’s not a whole lot of guessing when it comes to video SEO and success on YouTube.

Why does YouTube make their secrets so readily available when their owner, Google, keeps everything under a locked key? There’s a fundamental difference between the two sites that’s important to understand:

Google’s function is to send you away to another website while YouTube’s function is to keep you stuck on their turf.

While YouTube is indeed the second most popular search engine on the Internet (Google is first), YouTube is unlike Google in that all of the content you want to search actually resides on their servers. Google, however, can only point you to content that resides elsewhere, which they have no control over.

Because YouTube gets to directly manage all its content and because they need people to stay engaged on the site in order to survive, it’s in YouTube’s best interest for people to be equipped to utilize their service to its maximum potential.

• The more creators who are making content that’s engaging, the longer people stay on the site, allowing them to deliver more ad impressions.
• If YouTube can help you make more money on their site, the more money they’ll make, too, since Adsense revenue sharing is 50/50.
• The more money people make at it, the better the content will be, which brings more “stickiness” to the site.

How to be successful with Google’s SEO will most likely always be a game of cat and mouse, but YouTube is an open book. Literally. It’s called the YouTube Creator Playbook.

Don’t have time to read all 97 pages, but want the top 10 highlights on what it says regarding video SEO? Watch this video I did for ReelSEO last year on, “10 YouTube SEO Tips.”

Good TED talk here by YouTube’s Trends Manager on why videos go viral. Any other reasons you would add that he missed?

The KONY 2012 video has definitely hit the viral mark at almost 33 million views in only a few short days. Despite being a half hour long and breaking most of the rules for viral video, it’s been circulating the Internet thanks to its emotional plea, even if it’s mostly untrue.

As with any content that goes viral, creating something that people willingly share is very difficult and usually accidental, but creating content that actually spurs people from being a passive observer to an active participant that contributes to a solution is even more rare, almost unheard of.

We have a tendency to give something a lot of attention until something else draws us away from that. Is anyone still thinking about the earthquake that hit Haiti two and a half years ago? Are people still acting on all the government’s injustice there?

I want to create content that actually moves people to an action beyond clicking the Tweet or Like button. I’m more interested in “changing behaviors” than in “sharing behaviors” and studying what influences that in online video.

One of the first things we did was start engaging in as many of the conversations surrounding our video as possible. That included responding to hundreds of YouTube comments, thousands of tweets, Facebook posts, and more! It was a lot of work and, honestly, it took several of us many hours just to keep up with it.

Why did we put forth such an effort to engage with the social media fans who were seeing our content? Because we want to communicate to everyone, whether they’re just observing or actually engaging, that we’re interested in building relationships. We’re not just here to push our content out there for others to consume — we’re about building community. When viewers see that personal response from us, they turn from being fans to being loyal evangelists for our community.

Last week a friend of mine tweeted about a TV pilot show he saw on TV. The show replied personally to his tweet and thanked him for his support. Guess who is a huge fan of the show now!

A few days ago my wife saw a major music artist in concert and tweeted a picture of the show, mentioning how much she enjoyed it. Later she received a personal reply from the artist thanking her for the picture and that she was glad my wife had a good time. Guess who is a huge fan of that artist now!

Remember that social media must be social. There are so many voices shouting into this space that if you really want to stand out you have to show your audience that you can first listen.

The cost of permission

Traditional marketing is mostly about finding places where your audiences’ eyes are and paying for permission to put your message there. For the most part, there’s no relationship, no trust, no engagement. At best, you’re hoping that repetition and the perceived need your ad creates will lead to a purchase. Thus, you spread your message across TV, newspapers, magazines, website banners, billboards, mailings, and various other ways.

Marketing in social media is a completely different approach. Your audiences’ eyes are online where you want your message to be present, but you cannot simply pay for permission to put your message in social media. Sure, you can buy an ad on Facebook or pay Twitter to promote your tweet, but that is just another traditional medium to shout your message. It’s not social.

Social media is personal

People use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social networks to engage with friends, family, and people they admire. It’s a social space where interruptions and spam are not tolerated. Unlike TV, newspapers, magazines, website banners, billboards, and mailings where you pay to enter their space, in social media you have to be invited into their space. And even once you’re invited, they still have absolute control to kick you out at any moment for any reason.

The permission to have your message invited to be in front of people in social media is a privilege that is significantly more valuable than the price per click on a Facebook ad. Each person who follows you on Twitter, likes your Facebook Page and subscribes to your blog is giving you a checkmark of credibility and trust. At the most, it’s someone who believes in your organization and is willing to engage. At the least, it’s someone who is curious and is willing to hang around a bit to see what you’re all about.

Listen, don’t shout

The biggest mistake many organizations make after they’re invited into someone’s social space is forgetting to be social. Tweeting links to your product or services is not social. Without prior engagement with your audience, it feels like spam. Most people may be forgiving at first, but do it a couple more times and you’ll quickly be unfollowed and unliked.

There is so much noise in social media that few people are actually being heard. Everyone is shouting and few people are listening. If you want to be heard, you must first be one of the organizations that listens.

Listen by engaging with the people in your niche by adding value to conversations. Respond to random people who are asking questions, offer help and support for a product even if it isn’t yours, help spread helpful articles and videos, etc. People do not connect with an organization as well as they connect with a person, so be personable, be approachable, be friendly, use humor, and don’t take yourself too seriously. Be social and add value to their social network feeds.

You must earn a voice, respect, and trust before your promotional plugs will even be seen. And then, not only will it be seen, but people who have grown to respect you will also volunteer their voice to help you spread the word. And we all know word-of-mouth is the most powerful form of marketing.

Rethink marketing intentions

Through everything you do in social media, make it clear that you love connecting with your customers, helping them however you can, and that you want to engage with what they’re doing beyond your product or service. It should be clear that you want to use social media to make yourself more available to them and they should feel that you actually appreciate connecting with them.

For example, when many businesses start building their social presence, they default to “bribing” their mailing lists to follow them online. They’ll offer some sort of promotion to a couple random people who follow them or like their page. This isn’t an entirely bad idea, but the philosophy behind it can often hinder the social initiative they’re seeking to create. Customers on your list may already be skeptical that you’re just trying to build another marketing list, so businesses must be careful to not to even unintentionally communicate that this is for the purpose of creating another promotional initiative online. Instead, a more social approach is to make sure it’s for the purpose of giving back to the people who have already given your organization so much. And then accurately communicate it as such. What’s subtly communicated in this approach is vastly different from what’s communicated in the former approach.

Remember, you’re requesting permission for people to invite you in to their personal (and often private) space. Help them welcome you into that space willingly and then earn your keep.

Capitalize by engaging

Shouting your message to an audience online that’s not listening works against you, not only because your message no longer positive to them, but because it’s something they’ve blocked out. Your message isn’t even neutral anymore! That’s why it’s so important to always engage, be personable, and listen more than you shout.

Social media is different than traditional promotional mediums because it’s social and it must remain social if you want to earn respect and, thus, sales. Don’t act like a salesperson; act like a friend in business. See how you can help them before promoting yourself. That perceived connection will bring you to the top of their list when they’re ready to seek the solutions that you provide.

This video is all well and good, but I think asking, “What’s the ROI of social media?” is like asking, “What’s the ROI of our staff meetings?” We all know it’s important and necessary, but trying to measure it exactly is like trying to measure the quality of our relationships, except business want to know how valuable the relationships are to them. This feels like a very anti-social approach to relationships to me. Anyone who approaches relationships asking, “What’s the return on this relationship for me?” is probably not someone who will genuinely and authentically build relationships.

To really thrive in social media, businesses need to remember that social media is primarily social. Use it to give attention more than you use it to try to get attention.

Think of social media ROI as, “Return On Influence.” Influence is a very ellusive thing to measure, but that’s okay — just continue to be as influential as you can to make the world a better place for the people who follow you online.

(ht socialtimes for the video)

People seem to watch new videos in their YouTube subscription box on specific days of the week, and sometime at certain times of the day, too. While the best time to upload a youtube video is dependent on your specific audience and niche, I’ve found that two certain days and times seem to work best for me and the kind of content I generally work with.

In this week’s Creator’s Tip video for ReelSEO.com I share what those two days are and what time of the day I found it best to publish my videos to YouTube. I’d love to hear what the rest of you guys experience with this. What days and times have you found work best for uploading your videos to YouTube to get the most views from subscribers?

It’s not surprising that this web series and its creator, Felicia Day, have received so many awards and big sponsors. I just finished watching the season 5 finale and can’t wait for season 6 to start! The show is funny, the characters are engaging, and it scratches a niche of MMORPG gamers who are totally engaged online. The show shares much of the guild drama that is often the downfall of even top guilds. As someone who was the guild leader of a top ranking guild back in my way too immersive Guild Wars days, I can totally relate, which makes the humor and story line all the more engaging for me. I can totally relate!

There are so many lessons we can learn from a series like this, but a few stick out to me loud and clear.

• Pick a niche and serve it well. Some would argue that the dedicated MMORPG community is already a narrow niche in the gamer niche, but because Felicia apparently is very in-tune with the experiences and drama that go along with being part of a guild, the series does very well. We relate!
• Create a web series for your brand. There’s nothing wrong with the video commercial or paying YouTube for TrueView ads, but if you just create solid content that focuses on consistency and a community niche, you’ll end up building a dedicated fan base over time instead a flash-in-the-pan number of viewers to your commercial. Just think of the cash and publicity World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, or another MMO could be raking in if they had launched the idea for The Guild.
• Focus on solid content first, branding second. There actually isn’t any branding in The Guild, which is both surprising and refreshing in some ways, but would probably feel like it had more continuity if it was actually build on World of Warcraft like we all assume.
• A web series does not have to be long. We’re used to 21-minute episodes on TV that air once a year for 13 weeks, but there’s nothing that says we have to follow that format on the web. Some of the episodes for The Guild are only a few minutes long and have only 10 videos in a season. You can make your own rules on the Internet.
• You don’t need a big budget. Felica Day started The Guild as a fun little project with some friends, so the first couple seasons were created on very low budgets and are just as engaging as the later seasons that are financially backed by sponsors like Bing and Xbox Live.

Watch episodes of The Guild at watchtheguild.com.

QUESTION: What other lessons do you learn from The Guild as a web series?

(Ugh, I cannot wait for Guild Wars 2 to be released! C’mon, ArenaNet!)

Last night my wife and I took advantage of some free babysitting and went out on a date. Since we only have a few days left in Minnesota before we move, my wife wanted to get the experience of ice fishing. So a friend of ours took us out and she caught two fish! Perhaps the most exciting part for her, though, was driving out onto the frozen lake in our car. I’ll admit I was even a bit nervous at first, but after seeing that the lake pretty much had developed a roadway system on it, I was fine.

Fun times! Enjoy watching our date night!

It was fun this week to shoot an episode of Creator’s Tip that answers some questions the audience asked me. They were questions related to setting up a home video studio, how to schedule videos to publish to YouTube subscriber boxes at a specific time, finding good background music to use, how to respond to questions people ask about your information products, and more. Good times! I pretty much just answered all of them off-the-cuff, in case you can’t tell. haha

As I mention in the video, if you have any suggestions for these peoples’ questions, please feel free to share them in the comments on YouTube. I’m sure those people are definitely looking for them.

It makes sense. I mean, we’re used to watching channels on TV. Why not on YouTube? Despite having as many users as Facebook does (around 800 million) and massively more viewing power than television, YouTube’s users mostly watch individual videos and click a way. YouTube wants to get people more engaged in channels and regular content more than random individual videos so they’ll actually stick around the site more.

The implication for video marketers and creators is simple: make sure your channel is all setup and engaging. Use it as a home page for your videos and send traffic to it, encouraging people to click that subscribe button.

Someone at Epipheo Studios made this video for the kids ministry at their church. Apparently it went over really well. The kids loved it, God’s Word was revealed, and hopefully the parable of the Prodigal Son is that much clearer to those children now than it was before.

We’re all going to die sometime. Do you know what happens to all your tweets, Facebook pictures, status updates, videos, and more once you pass away?

Some of the social networks actually own the rights to your content when you post them. That information can be passed along to your next of kin after you pass away if they request it. If you’re married, that means your spouse. If you’re a teenager, that means your parents.

This video, by Lifeinsurancefinder.com, points that out.

This video reinforces the fact that what you post online, even privately, may not stay private forever. After you die, you especially lose control over that data. Don’t post anything online, even privately, that you wouldn’t want the world to know.

This is a great example of video marketing that provides some helpful lessons.

1. Create a video that benefits in audience in some way. In this case, it educates us with information that we didn’t even know was important to us until we watched this video. It addresses an area that’s important in most of our lives, social media, and addresses a myth most of us believe about our private content online.
2. Reveal that information in a way that’s engaging. This video actually drug out that information for way too long, especially in the beginning. It’s about 3 times longer than it needs to be. They should’ve hit the 1:50 mark much sooner.
3. Focus on solid content first, branding second. There’s no branding distraction throughout the video, which is great. This lessens the skepticism many might otherwise have while absorbing the stats.
4. Point people to your website for more info. The end of the video points viewers to their slideshow for more details where they pitch you a “digital will.” A clear call-to-action like this is a great method of using online video to direct traffic to your website, although I would’ve preferred something more skimmable than a slideshow.
5. Only provide one call-to-action. The unnecessarily long 13 second outro featured their logo, website address, Twitter address, and Facebook address. That’s too many options. Point me to where you want me to go or to what you want me to do next. Make it clear and remove any other confusion. Too many options and I just feel it’s easier to click away.

QUESTION: What video marketing lessons do you see in this video?

(ht socialtimes)

Wow, what a crazy, wild ride this past year has been. I started out 2011 as a self-employed guy who wrote books, spoke at conferences, blogged, and played with social media and online video for fun. Now all of the above have kind of morphed into my position at Epipheo Studios as their new Creative Strategist.

I’ll be writing more about my job there in upcoming posts, but at the beginning I’ll be helping Epipheo develop it’s own original content as well as helping their clients know how to best position themselves in social media and especially in online video spaces. As time goes one, my role will shift and morph along the way based on my own passion areas as well as the needs of the company, but overall I’ll be helping Epipheo fulfill their slogan of “revealing truth in a way that changes people’s lives,” except “truth” will become a capital T as we advance God’s stories through social media and online video.

It will be an exciting ride!

I’d love for you guys to join me in it as I talk here about my personal experiences, things I’m learning and discovering about social mediums, and how ministry intersects with technology. Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe to the email list!