Hey Everybody,

You might remember a post that I wrote a while ago when I was launching my first YouTube Contest. You can see the video here if you want. Anyway, I just wanted to report on how the contest is doing. Today, we have reached the half way point. We are two months into the four month video submission timeframe. We have 51 group members and 30 videos. Not too shabby for a contest promoted totally through social media (no ads and no pr). All I did to promote it was tag other people’s videos that related to the subject matter (braces) and tell them to submit their videos to our group an win.

At first, the contest was going pretty slow, but I think that we are finally reaching a tipping point of organic growth. At this point I have probably joined about 20 themed groups on various SNSs and sent them contest info. I have probably tagged or seeded about 250 videos. But the great part is that by now, people are telling other people and seeing the invite to submit on other people’s videos. This is increasing traffic to our contest and the comments and messages sent to me (contest coordinator). So word-of-mouth is finally starting to kick in.

We are lucky though, there is already preexisting online community of braces wearers. And our client (who makes custom brackets for kids braces) really wants to get the idea of his product out to them. So it really is a nice marriage of an existing online community of conversation and a fun way to access them.

Our client is called WildSmiles, check out their custom braces here.

Oh and here is our intro video. Please have mercy on it. I shot and cut it and I am not a video guy. I was just trying to make the video very cost-effective, as it is not as important as the actual promotion. I also know that it is a little hammy, but it is for kids.

Thanks,

Hope you enjoyed the post,

Will Flavell

Hey Everybody,

I know that I haven’t written for a few days, but today’s is gonna be good. It is about the first YouTube contest that I built. It is for WildSmiles. They are a company/orthodontist that sells specially shaped brackets for braces. Kids can get stars, hearts, footballs, diamonds and more.

But, they are a small company that needed to get their name out there. So I poked around and did some research and found that there are already large communities of people with braces. I think that there is something to do with the shyness of this group and the lack of their outlet for their opinions that causes them to amass online. They have thousands of videos and lots of large groups on both Facebook and MySpace.

So we created the WildSmiles Braces Experience Video Contest. On YouTube users can join our group (we are a group not a sponsored contest so ours is free) and add videos. Then other users will join and vote for the winner. We are giving away two Nintendo Wiis as prizes. The contest opened last Friday, April 25.

Here is the video:

So if you have braces or someone you know does, go check out the contest and you could win a Wii.

Results
Well, we don’t have any real results so far since the contest is only 4 days old. But I wanted to share with you some cool stuff that has happened since we loaded the first version of our intro video.

The first time that we ever loaded a video for this contest was on Friday, April 18. This was the first edition of the intro video. I didn’t put it on the contest, just on my account so the client could see the video in the right format. Without any promotion or tags, this video got 500 views by the next Wednesday. Also starting on that Friday, the client saw a doubling in their Web traffic. Now bear in mind that the client doesn’t have huge Web traffic to start with, but still that is an improvement.

Oh and this newest edited edition of the contest intro video has only been up for four days and has about 100 hits.

Enjoy the video, it was a lot of fun to make.

I’ll keep you posted as the contest progresses.

Word,

William Flavell

In all seriousness,

My keyboard has seen better days. It is beat up. I have cleaned it several times and I need to just grow up and accept the fact that I have to buy a new one. Don’t you think that it is kind of weird that no one really gets attached to keyboards? In Hemingway’s time a typewriter was like an old friend, but now keyboards come and go and no one sheds a tear. Not even me.

So, what is a good keyboard to buy? What is a reasonable price range? trusted brand? specs to look for? You got answers, I got ears, lets get ‘em together.

It’s time I step up to a real keyboard. And plan a burial for a trusted friend.