Comments on: How I got 39,000 views on a month-old documentary trailer in just a week

By: Brian

Brian — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:36:46 +0000

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

By: Coach Gogo

Coach Gogo — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:30:07 +0000

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

By: Pat

Pat — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 18:55:09 +0000

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.

By: Simon

Simon — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:15:52 +0000

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.

By: Frederick

Frederick — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:08:09 +0000

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.

By: Matt Osborne

Matt Osborne — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:15:22 +0000

It looks like a damn fine documentary, too.

By: Dr. Spaulding

Dr. Spaulding — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:00:21 +0000

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?)