Doing the Honors — Leveraging Human Desire To Build Community

YouTube is not always what it seems. On the face of it it’s a video site. It’s also a search engine (some say it’s the second largest one). It’s also a great example of a community … and their community platform offers many lessons for digital community leaders. Here’s one:

My almost-teenage son was very excited last night. He and some friends made a tribute music video of a song by teen heartthrob Justin Bieber.  They posted it to YouTube.  He was thrilled that the video received three “honors.” The video was ranked as most watched, top rated and most discussed — in a specific category, in a specific geographic region.

Good community organizers understand the desires of their members. Great community organizers leverage those desires to grow and engage their communities.

YouTube — one of the most fascinating community platforms — has leveraged technology to do just this. At least 100 community members multiplied by a huge, huge, huge number of categories and geographic regions were “honored” (great choice of word!) with feel-good feedback on their work yesterday. And this happens everyday. This is certainly not the only reason that 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute (source, YouTube).  But it certainly helps.

PRACTICAL TIP: Even if you don’t have the technology built into your community platform, do something (anything) today to honor members. And honor them for something that will encourage an action that will grow and further engage members in your community.

P.S. Check out the video… my son plays Bieber :-)

Endcap or Gravestone

Here’s a snap I caught in Heathrow a couple of days ago. An endcap (you know the coveted display case at the end of an aisle in a retail store) that is either celebrating/remembering or exploiting an artist’s life. Or perhaps both. You decide. 

Don't Stop Till You Get Enough

Secrets of the Web’s Most Popular Video EVER

Distribution, Distribution, Distribution. Photo credit Reed Kavner

In a rather excited blogpost (lots of exclamation points!!… count them) Visible Measures, a company that makes it possible to track video views online, has listed the top viral videos of all time.

Number one is “Soulja Boy Crank That” logging in at 356,300,000 views.

Check out the video. It’s very very smart. Do you think its a coincidence that the most watched online video of all time does the following things so well:

Branding: the song has the singer’s name in it — and it’s no cameo.. “Soulja Boy” basically IS the hook/chorus. This makes it easy to remember the artist, easy to talk about, easy to find again.

Calling people to action: the video is jampacked with imagery of, well, people watching the video. And many times they are watching it together. What a terrific, not-so-subtle reminder to share the video and enjoy it with others.

The thing is built to work. Crank dat.