It’s been nearly one month since I created and released the Butler Blue II video during our missing mascot fiasco (no, they were never found).
I’ve refrained from posting on this until now because I wanted to allow enough time to look at stats and analytics on the video to say if it was a success or not. Conclusion? Success.
I’ve never been one to throw the word ‘viral‘ around. [Example] You can’t make a video ‘viral’, it’s up to the people who watch it if they want to pass it along. But you CAN help the video become viral by choosing your key influencers and letting it go from there.
When I ran across a music video on a local Ning site called Smaller Indiana, I knew it had a place on our site. The song, by Jon McLaughlin, is titled ‘For You, From Me’. The music video was made exclusively for the city of Indianapolis, and it is a great visual of the city.
When you think about it, you’re aren’t always just selling your campus to a student. You’re selling the area, the city, the location.
I embedded the video on our site on a page titled ‘Around the Town‘ and another called ‘A City of Opportunity‘. You can see it by clicking either link. Indy.org also shared the .m4v file on their site, so I plan to build a branded Butler flash player to remove the Smaller Indiana link from our site and the potential that someone will click away from our site after watching the video.
What videos are out there, either on local visitor/tourist sites, YouTube, etc., that you could embed into your site?
Let’s talk a little bit about expectations of an admission website, and the evolving nature of it. I’m going to speak in terms of the Whole Product Concept, which some of you might be familiar with. It looks like this:
Posted by Brad J. Ward | Posted in Flickr, YouTube | Posted on 08-04-2008-05-2008
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While you were sleeping, Flickr unveiled what has been largely speculated recently: Video. But why? Isn’t Flickr a photo site? Well, yeah.
Here’s the scoop, from the Flickr Blog: Videos can only be 90 seconds that are smaller than 150mb and uploaded by pro members. There is a ton of great info in their Help section as well, basically all affirming that they don’t intend to compete with YouTube, etc.
In addition, they raised the size of an uploadable photo from 10mb to 20mb. Must be preparing for the new 22.1mp Canon 1Ds Mk 3 and Nikon D3.
I couldn’t possibly go 2 straight Tuesday’s without sharing some sort of how-to, so here is one that I saw a few days ago. How to Make Viral Videos. Ironically enough, the video itself is starting to go viral, averaging about 20,000 views per day.
It seems that as each month passes we have more and more access to metrics/stats/analytics on social media sites, which is great. This will help us continue to dig deep and learn more about our viewers, etc. YouTube recently announced that you can get stats on your videos by clicking Account > Videos, Favorites, & Playlists > then clicking “About this video” to get stats for that video.
Here’s an example from one a Blue2 video; he’s learning how to skateboard in this one:
Vancouver Film School and YouTube have teamed up to create a really unique scholarship, where students create and upload videos, and the YouTube community decides the winners. There are 3 full scholarships up for grabs. I don’t think I’ve seen a school actually hop on board with YouTube for a contest yet. Once I saw it on the homepage under ‘Featured Videos’ I could tell this was going to be something big. Watch the video below for more details, I can’t wait to see how this all unfolds! Very original.
They are also using Google Pages for the rules, etc. More information can be found here. While you’re at it, check out the VancouverFilmSchool channel on YouTube. They’ve uploaded nearly 400 videos of student work. It’s cool to see them use YouTube so heavily; I’m sure it’s hard to showcase student work through your typical boring brochure, especially for a film school!
Today we’re going to touch on ‘The Power of Social Media’, and give you a brief example of how quickly something can grow. The case used in this video is a Facebook group titled ‘PLEASE PARTICIPATE IN STUDENT PROJECT’. The student writes:
I’m doing a communications paper on the marketing world and the new direction it has taken in today’s society and one of the main points that I’m trying to make is how one individual with an average facebook account can reach 100,000+ people in less than a week just by making a group and inviting people.
Think he succeeds? Check it out.
I recorded this in the middle of last week so that we could have an idea of growth for the days past the video. I mentioned in the video that by the end of the 5th day he would probably be over 200,000 members to the group. Well, he did, with 2 hours to spare. Phew, that was close. As of 1:30pm it was at 292,000, so by the time you read this (I’m post-stamping it to the PM to avoid Mr. Pott’s first ever post… don’t worry, it caught us all by surprise too ) the group should be over 300,000. To check, click here.
Posted by Brad J. Ward | Posted in Twitter, Web, YouTube | Posted on 06-03-2008-05-2008
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I missed this week’s How-To Tuesday, so consider this your viewing for the week. It came out yesterday by CommonCraft, they have a ton of other great video explanations too. This one is really good, I love the examples they use.
When you decide you’re ready to finally join Twitter, add me!
Enjoy!
) the group should be over 300,000. To check, 
