Just about everyday I receive some sort of email/Twitter spam stating they could help me “grow my business with social media” and ask me for an extraordinary amount of money to find out how. In my opinion, it’s all just a scam, a bunch of con artists looking to make a quick buck off the gullible. Social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) is NOT about how to grow your business, it’s about content, it’s about people sharing content, content they find entertaining, content worth sharing. If you look at YouTube‘s Most Viewed (All Time) videos, you’ll see they’re all entertaining videos, none of product pitches or corporate brand videos.
Cuteness = Lots of viewers
Marketeers today are looking for the best way to make their campaigns viral, looking for the secret ingredient to getting people to send their links to a friend. Below I’ve listed some videos on YouTube of some popular videos that have a large amount of views. I’ve worked on many marketing campaigns and the goal is to get people to view your pitch, it would be fantastic if I could get 10,000,000+ people to view a campaign in little as 2 months as is the case with video #1 (surprised kitty). With Surprised Kitty (video #1), it’s getting 183,000+ views a day, why, because it’s soooooo frickin’ cute!
The tip is to be cute, to be something worth sharing. I’ve seen lots of marketing campaigns that are just so boring, although some of great value/good deals, just nothing I would send to a friend, more of something I would probably bookmark and maybe lookup later. I am not here to tell you how to be cute, this is something you’ll need to find on your own, and hopefully you will.
Your video does not have to be long, as you see, video #1 the Surprised Kitty is 17 seconds, the highest viewed video (139,000,000+) on YouTube is only 55 seconds (video #2 below), a 16 second video of a panda sneezing (video # 7) has 46,000,000+ views, and who could forget the 5 second video of the Dramatic Look gerbil with 18,000,000+ views.
Something is better than nothing
I know I’ve fallen into the trap being a perfectionist and taking forever to post something because I always find ways to make it better (to me). Most of the popular videos are NOT planned videos, most are spontaneous raw footage. For Surprised Kitty, it’s only 17 seconds long and I’m sure the author probably thought about not posting it and had no clue it would get 10 million views in 2 months. I have a friend who had a cute video of her adorable daughter dancing, though she is not a YouTube person and most likely will never be upload it to YouTube (it’s currently only on Facebook). Then again, what is a “YouTube person”, I’m not sure there is a definition.
I wonder how much cute videos are out there that will never get uploaded. For me, growing up my mother had a camera on us ALL THE TIME and filmed just about everything we did growing up. In a way, I’m glad my mother doesn’t have a YouTube account, I dread the day she does, because I know there’s tons of embarrassing stuff she has on tape, ooooooh boy!
I have an amazingly adorable pet, a dog named Ashley who I wish I could capture on video, though every time I try she is too distracted by the camera. I’ll try and try again until I get that cute video of Ashley doing something cute!
Share!
So, to my point, the true power and secret in social media is people sharing, not only those who pass around links, it’s really the power of the people that upload the content, the people who for a brief moment let us view a part of their life, may it be funny or not, the act of sharing is the real secret of the new dawn of today’s internet. Below are some YouTube videos I found that are of cute babies and cute animals that have some great numbers on views, some videos have 200+ comments a day (video #2 & video #3).
NOTE: STATISTICS PULLED FROM YOUTUBE USING THIER DATA API.
Please email me other videos you think should be on this list.
Video #1Uploaded: Oct 14, 2009 by rozzzafly (288 days ago)
Comments: 265,466 (112 per day)
Favorites: 32,313 (921 per day)
Video #2Uploaded: May 22, 2007 by HDCYT (1,164 days ago)
Comments: 852,221 (322 per day)
Favorites: 375,740 (732 per day)
Video #3Uploaded: Jan 31, 2009 by booba1234 (544 days ago)
Comments: 459,148 (173 per day)
Favorites: 94,250 (844 per day)
Video #4Uploaded: Nov 01, 2006 by BlackOleg (1,366 days ago)
Comments: 423,975 (116 per day)
Favorites: 159,370 (310 per day)
Video #5Uploaded: Nov 18, 2009 by tillmanskateboarding (253 days ago)
Comments: 6,353 (11 per day)
Favorites: 2,848 (25 per day)
Video #6Uploaded: Dec 04, 2009 by yourfriendy (237 days ago)
Comments: 1,209 (1 per day)
Favorites: 432 (5 per day)
Video #7Uploaded: Nov 06, 2006 by jimvwmoss (1,361 days ago)
Comments: 367,308 (55 per day)
Favorites: 75,459 (269 per day)
Video #8Uploaded: Sep 05, 2007 by smpfilms (1,058 days ago)
Comments: 357,427 (159 per day)
Favorites: 168,912 (337 per day)
Video #9Uploaded: Oct 17, 2008 by leogunawan (650 days ago)
Comments: 133,776 (155 per day)
Favorites: 101,016 (205 per day)
Video #10Uploaded: Dec 29, 2006 by kjpar7 (1,308 days ago)
Comments: 120,027 (30 per day)
Favorites: 40,173 (91 per day)
Video #11Uploaded: Jun 28, 2007 by TheCatsPyjaaaamas (1,127 days ago)
Comments: 180,550 (42 per day)
Favorites: 48,158 (160 per day)
Video #12Uploaded: Jun 30, 2007 by wildminer (1,125 days ago)
Comments: 62,121 (11 per day)
Favorites: 12,562 (55 per day)
Video #13Uploaded: Sep 10, 2008 by BullehNL (687 days ago)
Comments: 156,511 (44 per day)
Favorites: 30,499 (227 per day)
Video #14Uploaded: Jun 06, 2007 by magnets99 (1,149 days ago)
Comments: 135,596 (26 per day)
Favorites: 30,660 (118 per day)
Video #15Uploaded: Nov 17, 2009 by DailyVsNews (254 days ago)
Comments: 1,710 (4 per day)
Favorites: 1,165 (6 per day)
Video #16Uploaded: Aug 09, 2007 by Rizzzalie (1,085 days ago)
Comments: 88,572 (32 per day)
Favorites: 35,552 (81 per day)
Video #17Uploaded: Jan 28, 2007 by burnellyow (1,278 days ago)
Comments: 77,741 (24 per day)
Favorites: 30,788 (60 per day)
Video #18Uploaded: Jul 24, 2008 by nalts (735 days ago)
Comments: 48,657 (49 per day)
Favorites: 36,740 (66 per day)
Video #19Uploaded: Oct 06, 2006 by videowhip69 (1,391 days ago)
Comments: 64,043 (46 per day)
Favorites: 64,547 (46 per day)
Video #20Uploaded: Mar 15, 2007 by sarakling76 (1,232 days ago)
Comments: 64,398 (18 per day)
Favorites: 23,167 (52 per day)
Video #21Uploaded: Feb 08, 2008 by gardea23 (902 days ago)
Comments: 115,638 (37 per day)
Favorites: 33,972 (128 per day)
Video #22Uploaded: Jun 28, 2007 by rnickeymouse (1,127 days ago)
Comments: 54,418 (15 per day)
Favorites: 17,190 (48 per day)
Video #23Uploaded: May 19, 2007 by youryouyou (1,166 days ago)
Comments: 44,730 (17 per day)
Favorites: 20,849 (38 per day)
Video #24Uploaded: Oct 10, 2006 by VideoBooN (1,388 days ago)
Comments: 55,228 (9 per day)
Favorites: 12,709 (39 per day)
Video #25Uploaded: Dec 04, 2009 by thejacksonstoo (237 days ago)
Comments: 427 (0 per day)
Favorites: 59 (1 per day)
Video #26Uploaded: Oct 13, 2005 by nujerzeydevil (1,750 days ago)
Comments: 65,248 (10 per day)
Favorites: 18,672 (37 per day)
