How I got 39,000 views on a month-old documentary trailer in just a week
One of the things I specialize in is getting video content to spread online. Last week I came across a YouTube trailer for a documentary called It Might Get Loud, and I wanted to see how much I could increase its view count after sending out only a few emails. I picked this trailer for three reasons:
1. It had already been uploaded on YouTube for about a month and so it no longer had the value of being new.
2. It was for a relatively small-release documentary, so it likely didn’t have a large marketing budget or widespread mainstream appeal.
3. There were many other competing versions of the same trailer on YouTube, the Apple website and the movie’s official website. This way I could keep track of how quickly other versions of the trailer were spreading without my help.
The version of the trailer I chose had 76,790 views a week ago when I started the experiment. It had been on the web for 27 days so in total averaged about 2,800 views a day. I began by spending a few hours seeding out the video to communities I thought would be receptive to it. One of the talents I have is using analytic search tools to identify specific micro niches of influential bloggers that are most likely to write about the content I’m pushing.
Within days, the trailer made it onto the Huffington Post and then less than 24 hours later on the front page of Digg. When I began the experiment, links and embeds on Twitter and in the blogosphere were about equally spread out across several versions of the trailer, but within four or five days, links to the trailer I was pushing far outnumbered all the others:
By the end of the week I had the trailer up to 115,397 views, an increase of 38,607. The views-per-day count jumped up from 2,800 views a day to 5,515 views a day.
As a point of comparison, this version of the trailer had 36,346 views when I began my outreach, and by the end of the week was only up to 40,470 views, an increase of 4,124. Like all the other versions of the trailer on YouTube I was tracking, it actually had a decrease in the daily views, likely because it had already been on the web for so long.
This was a relatively niche small-release documentary and the trailer was a month old. Think of what I could do with your trailer or video if I had it on the day it launches.
Very impressive. Identifying the micro-niche blogs is the crucial step that so many “social media” companies overlook. Quality, not quantity. well done.
@mirywhitehill
except, you don’t explain those talents or reference the other marketing elements that may be contributing to people LOOKING for that trailer online.
Good work. Some objectivity in your braggadocio might get you more business though.
Indeed, impressive. This is part of a skill package that we need to teach journalism students. What communities did you identify, and how did you identify them? What analytic search tools were you using and how?
(And any chance you’ll be in Baltimore next school year and willing to speak to a journalism class?)
It looks like a damn fine documentary, too.
interesting, but without actually seeing the link submission or referral data to and from all these sites it means zip.
now if you’d taken a video that only had say 100 views over a month, THEN I would say that’s certainly impressive – the nature of viral is that it grows on it’s own – once it reaches a certain level of views, the referring links become exponential – try doing a case study on one of your own videos, then show us the analytics and click tracking data.
Frederick, I agree that it’s hard to do a controlled experiment given the limitations, but I disagree that it all means zip. Not only am I positive that my seeding the story is the reason it got on the Huffington Post and Digg, but I was also closely monitoring mentions of the video on Twitter and Digg and saw people linking to it as a result of finding it in communities I seeded it to.
This might be a “small-release” film, but there are HUGE names involved. The film obviously has a lot of appeal, which gives you a big advantage when you’re seeding. You should try the same experiment with a small-budget film that has a no-name cast. I’m willing to bet that you won’t see the same results.
Simon does obey an important axiom of successful marketing:
Choose a great product to market.
Those who think there’s nothing to learn from the little case study above aren’t paying attention.
Possible Lesson?
Identify free/low cost “analytical search tools” to help me identify specific microniches of influential bloggers.
Any marketer can do this using even the most primitive of online tools and experience great ROI on time and effort.
Simon, my only question to you is, how did you get said influential bloggers to check it out.
Coach Gogo
Good Morning. I am an investment banker and trader. I use to run a site for stock picks in the 90s.
I am trying to build a network which has opt in emails (targeted investors)
I wish to add the social aspect and the video syndication. I also have some newsletter guys that put buy recomndations on the deals i am in.
If you can give me some guidence. I would appreciate it. We use to do