Making FIRST Viral

[protoserge]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

Maybe I'm just a grumpy old 25 year old but I hate nearly every viral video. I would much rather be popular and have people pay attention for longer than a week and a half. We're trying to change the culture over the long haul not for a minute.

How many people are still playing WOW because they saw the leeroy jenkins video? I imagine not that many.

If we hadn't had such an issue with mobile user access on this video, we might have gotten more than 4,000 views

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6khLRcDgv4

It did finally become the #1 search result for "robo gangman style", though. One thing I took away from helping produce this was that timing is everything. Thankfully, we were able to latch onto Gangnam Style before it became too, too unpopular and overplayed.

For this upcoming season, I'm switching back to the media group to maintain our team's momentum after one of our mentors retired from his previous position. I'd love to make videos that are a) educational b) make a difference c) fun. Our Chairman's Award production is going to be our number one priority this year, but I know we can create some additional content that will help advance FIRST and its message.

I'd love to take the ideas that have been brought up in this thread and use them as inspiration for our productions. One thing I think that will be advantageous is to develop a mini-series or collective set of videos that are not mutually exclusive. Building an audience is very important, and I feel that developing a plot line or continuity between videos will help us. One thing that may also be of benefit is to ask teams to participate in a video version of the "How I work" interview series.