The science of a great Youtube video - The Station and OralB

Making content for Youtube is a science and when you understand the formula it becomes quite easy to replicate.

Recently a number of the top Youtubers created a new channel together, The Station. They used all the tricks that had gotten them so far (boobs in the thumbnails, fast editing, weblebrity appearances, and annotations asking for favouriting and rating).

In my opinion, The script and filming is average but that just helps to confirm that with the right formula you can turn any dog into a hero. The channel is now the 15th most subscribed of all time! The show is also acting as a great tactic to get great exposure to the actor’s personal Youtube channels.


OralB have done a great job at creating what I see as the first ad that has been specifically made for Youtube. It uses a lot of the editing tricks that many of the top Youtubers employ.

List of Music Festivals using Social Media well

We are well and truly into the Music Festival season. Promoters have always been great at using social media so I thought I would take a look at some of the better examples of music festivals using social media.

1. Stereosonic
Their twitter account is run by the general manager of the festival which gives the inside scoop on the happenings of the festival. This is also used to gauge feedback of certain ideas.

They have created a competition on Facebook, where punters have to take photos of the Stereosonic advertising, they then go in the draw to win tickets. Here is an example of a fan going over and above to get the ticket (action kicks off at 30secs)


2. Defqon.1 Maximum Exposure
One of the best competitions this year was run through dance site Inthemix
Defqon the competition asked people to get the Defqon logo out to the most people. The prize was to win a trip to Holland for music festival Defqon.1


Check out some of the other great efforts


3. Outside Lands (USA)
Looking abroad, this is a great example of what could is possible. Attedees at Outside Lands could use kiosks so you could upload your own photos and videos of the shows Then share them online with friends on Twitter, Facebook and other sites. They also streamed all the festival live on Youtube. Read the full case study on InsideFacebook.


4. Lollapoolza (USA)
An amazing case study on measuring the effectiveness of Social Media for ticket sales to Lollapoolza. Clever use of tracking tags and google analytics, read here.

5. Seeding a Green Festival (UK)
A case study from the London Green Festival, which gave the chance for a band to open the festival. Really nice simple case study to read.

6. One Movement Festival
If you didn't live in Perth there was a good chance you may have missed out on what was happening at the One Movement festival/conference. However Andrew McMillian was able to inform everyone with what they missed out with live blogging/twittering/facebook coverage of the festival.

7. BDO and Splendour Forums
FasterLouder are now looking after the forums for Splendour in the Grass, Laneway Festival, and Big Day Out. If you are interested in music and digital media Neil Ackland's (founder of Sound Alliance) blog is a must read

BONUS
Although not a music festival, I thought I would add this one. The Facebook Admins have been taking photos of bikes around Syndey and if your bike was featured you would win tickets to the festival, nice idea. The festival kicking off on Wednesday night, go here for more info and tickets!


I am looking to build this list out. Let me know what festival has done something different in the social space and I will add them to the list.

How to get an internship! Got any tips?

With all this chatter about graduates getting jobs at the moment. I thought I would throw my two cents in about how to land an internship.

1. Know where you want to go
I think the first thing to do is suss out the situation and find out who is doing kick arse work in the area you are interested in. Make a list and go for the top of the pile.

2. Volunteering is not enough
Having an intern is a lot hassle for employees these days. You have to always find them small tasks to do. So instead of just asking for an internship find something that you can do for the company that can add value. Social Media offers a great opportunity for Gen Y looking to get an internship. A number of marketers don’t get it and want someone young to explain it for them. If I was looking for an internship at the moment in a marketing organisation, I would tell them that I would like to compile a report for them, on what people are saying about their brand online and what are competitor brands doing in social media?

3. Something different

Have a talking point. My next door neighbour, Josh Clement sent me this great video he created to help him find an internship. Awesome.

4. Contacts
When I was at University, my mum knew a lot of people in advertising so she kept on trying to introduce me to people working in Advertising. It shitted me to tears, I wanted to make it on my own. That was until she helped me get my first break with Sputnik. Do not be stubborn like I was, take all the help you can get. Most people in this world will try to help you out and will enjoy seeing someone succeed.

What other tips do you have for graduates looking for jobs/internships?

The Perfect Gift for a Man

So if you are like me and struggle with buying Christmas and birthday presents, do not stress I have your brother and dad sorted this Christmas!

Back in June, a number of bloggers (including myself) shared some really personal stories about what it means to be a man for the Inspire Foundation's Man Week. There were a number of amazing heart felt stories, at the time it felt like something really big.

The super smart Gavin Heaton and Mark Pollard took the idea to the next level, they helped to get the story beyond the blogosphere bubble by creating a book ‘The Perfect Gift for a Man’ which was a collection of stories about being a man. Below is Gavin helping to get the story out on KAK.


If you would like to purchase a hard copy of the book you can buy it from Blurb.com or you can buy the e-Book from The Perfect Gift for a Man website. The profits will all go to The Inspire Foundation, so dig deep!

Case Study: Yves Klein Blue Twitter Application

Problem
Yves Klein Blue are an indie/rock band who in June were about to release a new album Ragged and Ecstatic. With the release of the new album it was hoped that it would become a Top 40 selling album.

Strategy
To captalise on the growing success YKB were having with Twitter we decided to leverage one of the recent innovations through Twitter which was a Twitter application which allowed someone to download an mp3 when they tweeted a unique code for, this had been used by TRVS-DJAM weeks earlier.

We proposed that Yves Klein Blue would allow people to download one of their songs and go in the running for VIP tickets to Splendour in the Grass if they tweeted a specific code.

Implementation
We used Culture Jam who built the original TRVS-DJAM application to build the site/app for us. For launch, we went out to Yves Klein Blue existing social network and communicated the offer.

TRV$DJAM Twitter Promotion Screencast from Culture Jam on Vimeo.

We then went out to a number of influential music tweeters/bloggers and made them aware of the offer.

Results
We were hoping for 1,200 downloads of the song (estimated that of their current social network that 15% would tweet the offer and they would influence one person in their twitter following to do the same).

We ended up falling significantly short of this target with only 432 downloads of the track.

The silver lining was that we were able to double the size of YKB Twitter following in two weeks, they went from followers 487 to 1,017 in three weeks. It took 5 months to get their first 487 followers.

Learnings
I really think that you learn more from the campaigns that do not match your expectations than the ones that do.

Size of Twitter in Australia
Twitter is really really small in Australia. Twitter has 250,000 active Australian users. That is nothing! That is 3.5% of the size of Facebook. When you are trying to find a niche of fans, it probably would have been better to not make it even harder for ourselves by launching on a niche platform.

Locking in influentials
Locking in relevant influential Tweeters (music+following) prior to
launch is essential

Easier site navigation
We got 1,700 visitors to the site and only 432 followers. The drop between visitors and downloaders indicates that the bulk of users did not have twitter accounts or couldn’t be bothered to follow the steps

Mix of earned and paid media
We can’t rely on publicity to drive traffic to an application, since doing this venture with YKB we realized that it requires a mix of earned and paid media for an idea to kick off in the social media environment.

Comparing the Australian and US audiences
Be cautious when making comparisons between the US and Australia. Travis Barker and DJ-AM at the time had a substantial following, YKB did not.  

A digital music mystery: Australian Idol Fan to Follower anomaly, Do you know the answer?

What is the difference between a Facebook Fan and a Twitter follower?

I have been doing a bit of research into Australian music artists and their number of fans online. My hypothesis was the more album you sold, the more fans you would have on Myspace, Twitter and Facebook.

My white paper that I will release soon, finds benchmarks for ARIA charting artist. I have found the average number of Facebook fans, Myspace friends and Twitter followers of an artist should increase depending on what level of sales they got to on the ARIA chart (Gold, Platinium or 2x Platinium).

But I noticed one really interesting pattern, ex-Australian Idol contestants index really low on Facebook Fans but then really high on Twitter Followers?
For instance, a Gold (35,000+ album/single sales) selling artist the average number of Facebook Fans is 14,000 (e.g Karnivool, Bliss N Eso and Pnau all have between 10-15k for fans). However Australian Idol contestants Wes Carr and Ricki-Lee have a very low number of fans (2000 and 1,700 fans respectively). However when you look at Twitter followers the average is 1,300 followers but Wes and Ricki-Lee have triple that number with 3900 and 3800 respectively?!?!

So why is it that Australian Idol contestants index so low on Facebook fans yet so high on Twitter followers?

I have got no idea, I would be really keen to hear your theory on why this phenomena is occurring. Free Guy Sebastian album for the person who comes up with the right answer!

Case Study: My Year Without Sex Social Media Campaign

Problemo: My Year Without Sex was a new Australian film, which was hard to market as it didn’t fit into one specific category. The trailer was not going to be enough to get people to watch it. Working on a small budget we needed to get people to talk about the film.


Strategy: Use word of mouth to help fuel discussion around the movie

Implementation:

Identifying Key Environments
We identified the target market as mothers. Using Google Ad Planner and a number of other tools we looked for the environments where mothers were most vocal online and three environments stood out; Facebook, Mothers Forums and Mother Blogs.

Part 1: Mothers Forums
We went out to a number of the major mothers forums and offered the Moderators of the sites free double passes to see the film. Forums host some of the liveliest discussions online.

Part 2: Blogs
We identified a number of influential female blogs that we thought would enjoy the film. These bloggers were found using the Top 100 Australian Women Bloggers list. From this list we got a number of high profile bloggers to go and see the movie. We also used the NuffNang to outreach to a further 20 bloggers.

Part 3: Facebook
There was an opportunity to get a number of people along to a pre screening for the film in each major cities. We used Facebook Advertising and a Facebook Event to set up an exclusive Facebook Pre Screening for 500 people. We also ran a Facebook Page which had further information about the movie.

Part 4: Youtube - Creating a piece of passable content
We decided to create a piece of content around the film which we believed could have mass appeal online. We created the ‘5 Things that get in the way of Sex’ video. We were able to get this video to the front page of Digg and then Youtube Honour Board with 25,000 views in one week. This ended up being the feature of a blog post in Sydney Morning Herald Ask Sam Blog.


Result:
In its opening week MYWS took $177,522 and has currently grossed $1,127,838 in box office sales.

Learnings:
Facebook Page
It is really hard for someone to become a fan of a product that they have no knowledge about. We did not see growth in the Page until after the release date which usually does not work with the timings/budgeting of films.

Facebook Advertising
This campaign ran from early April to May this year, this was before the upgrade to the Facebook advertising model. We were only able to manage to get 900 people into the Page for the movie, when we promoted Cedar Boys another Australian film we were able to get 2,000 easily into the Page. So this new upgrade has definitely made a difference.