Using YouTube

Going in to this project, my strategy to get the most views/ comments on my YouTube video was to film an event.  My reasoning was that 1) I could advertise for my video at the event itself and 2) Most events have Facebook pages where I could post my video to draw attention to it.

I was originally going to film an event at southwest week because most students would be with their friends and would be apt to search for a video of themselves later on if I told them what to search for.  Unfortunately, I left my camera in my friend’s car the day before class and since I can’t take videos with my phone, I had to wait until a week later to make a video.  My video ended up being of the Boston Marathon.  I volunteered at the event and was in charge of a corral of runners, which was perfect because I had the attention of a about a hundred people.  Before the race started I made an announcement to everyone in my corral letting them know that I was going to be taking a video of all of them taking off.  I told them the title of the video so that they’d all know what to look for. I figured that people would want to show their families the video once they were finished the race.

The next part of my strategy was timeliness.  I knew that I had to get the video up fast because people would only be searching “Boston Marathon” for a few days after the event.  Also, I figured that the people who were in my corral would want to show their families the video once they were finished the race.  That said, the second I got back to my house I started working on the video and I managed to get it up on YouTube just as the elite runners were making it to the finish line.  That first night I got about 150 hits.  Other ways I advertised my video was I added it to the Boston Marathon Facebook fan page and I added it in a comment that I made to and ESPN article about the event.  I tried to add it as a comment on other sites that had articles about the marathon, but most of them denied my comment because it had a link in it.  One site specifically sent me a message saying that they didn’t allow viral videos.  The last thing I did, and probably the most effective, was I added my link to my Facebook profile and asked my friends to comment.  I got 355 views in total (the third most in the class) and I got 5 comments.  All of the comments were from my friends though.  I responded twice, simply thanking them for commenting.

One of the things that surprised me about this process was that Facebook was not the most effective way to advertise my video.  When clicking on the “views” button on YouTube, it had a breakdown of how people got to my link.  Facebook only brought in 36 views.  The most hits I got were listed as being from “other/viral.”  I’m not sure what that means but I’m thinking that maybe my announcement at the marathon itself was the most effective.

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