Virability

Got a newsletter from Powderhouse Hill recently that reminded me of the power of this medium (these media). Our little Powderhouse Hill, which we coined as America's Smallest Ski Resort last March got on the media list on December 26. When everybody needed that little story to make us feel good. Thought I'd re post it here from our YouTube account.



We've had modest success with virability. Our biggest player, to date, is a five-minute clip we crafted about Bode Miller with selections from Bode NAKED, CRASHING, LAUGHING, BREAKING STUFF, you know, a basic day. We didn't post the clip but a commercial outfit put it up on YouTube and GoogleVideo to drive traffic to their site. As we were not capitalizing (at that time) on such posts we let it run and see what the numbers were. Got to about 50,000 before it was pulled for the copyright violation that it was (of our rights). We'll soon be returning an updated version of this and other clips, but not before we understand more about how and why to drive traffic.

During the 2006 Olympics we had about 500,000 visitors to our FlyingDownhill.com Seeing that traffic come and go I vowed that we will know more about how to harness interest, not just how to get it.

And that's the big adventure we all have to learn. I don't know whether it matters if Andy Warhol was right or not that "In the future [aka NOW] everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes."
Having seen how fame has treated Bode and many others, fifteen minutes could be a relief.

Getting our audiences to know who and what we are is key. But the other key is being something REAL. That's what drives the numbers. And that's the prospect of this media. We can get audiences inside the experience.

But virability is not just about being good and true, bad and interesting. It's about appealing to a wide swath of people at a particular moment. And finding a way to connect.

So email your friends this Powderhouse YouTube clip. I just posted it and there are 0 views. The url is above. I've got to think that a clip with nobody naked, no explosions, no fights over the rope, and just the minor controversy of the bald-headed claim/question of "America's SMALLEST resort" is not going to be too viral. But virability? Like a lip-syncing middle-aged dancer!

Here's the url which you can get (or the embed code if you want to paste in a clip). You can watch the clip, copy the url or get the embed code at YouTube: