So many dumb ways to die…

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If you haven’t heard yet, a video created by Metro (which is like Melbourne’s Cityrail) has generated over 8 million views on YouTube. This was a safety campaign talking about how basically you shouldn’t jump in front of trains or do other dum things.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0uybGeX5_8

So anyway, this video launched and they hoped for a good result but it blew past all expectation. You see the original idea was to target people in Melbourne with a a safety message (you see these all the time in Sydney, like those big posters telling you to mind the gap between the train and platform).

Of course with the internet you can’t really contain a message and especially with YouTube, once it’s out there th whole world has access to it. Well this vdeo was so good that eventually people started sharing it and it simply blew up. Checking on Wikipedia, Melbourne has a population of 4.1 million, and considering the video on YouTube has over 8.4 million views, you could assume that it is the equivalent to everyone in Melbourne watching it twice (the Metro YouTube channel owner would have more precise stats of exactly how many people are watching the video from each country, I can’t know that information).

Anyway it’s true that as soon as a viral video comes out people start analyzing why it has garnered so many views and try to replicate the success. Considering I’ve been in video production practically my whole life I thought I might throw in my views on it and the experience that I have from videos that have generated a lot of views and others that have generated very little.

By the way watch the video below if you haven’t seen it all ready

P.S. Between the time I wrote this article and embedding the clip the video has gotten an extra million or so views. It’s crazy.

Violence and Danger

Violence and danger are pre requisites for an engaging experience. That’s why most films you see that make big money in the cinemas have violence or at the very least drama that could lead to violence. This video simply goes all out with grizzly death scene after death scene. There is simply no way you would see so much death and violence (especially coming from a government organization which are known for being very boring) and not want to share it with a friend. While people will talk about how genius this piece is it’s actually really simple, lots of violence. The violence is done with cartoon characters and a happy theme in the background which adds to the contrast and makes it artistic and interesting (instead of just violence for violence’s sake).

In fact if you go on YouTube one of the most viewed videos are street fights/gangster and prison documentaries and war footage. People love violence. Of course you can’t just come out and create some violent video, you may get a lot of views but it’s not going to look good for your brand/service. However if you can create something interesting/artistic then it’s the perfect combination.

It Doesn’t Preach

Okay the whole purpose of this video is to tell people to not cross the tracks and do other silly things at train stations that could get them killed. However the video doesn’t get into this straight away, in fact the first half of the video makes no mention of trains whatsoever. Viewers (and especially the YouTube audience) hate watching an advertisement, that’s the reason we’re on YouTube! So if people see your video and they realize immediately that it’s an ad they will IMMEDIATELY leave. This video does well because it’s actually not even obvious what it does (in fact that creates some interest – like what is this all about, making people want to watch further).

Jingle

It has a cool jingle that stays in your head. “Dumb ways to die, so many dumb ways to die”. This sticks in your head and you’re probably going to end up singing it after you watch it and when one of your friends says “What the hell are you singing?” you can show them the video and so the ‘virus’ spreads. They even have a song you can download from iTunes.

Funny

This video has a good combination – unimaginable violence and being funny at the same time. It’s great. Kind of like Jackass. Actually the video is more funny then violent (the focus is more on that).

 Unexpected

Whenever you do something completely unexpected, or film someone reacting to something unexpected it’s always classic. No one expects a video like this.

That’s all the things I can think of at the moment. Also you don’t have to be violent to create a high engagement with your video, but you do need some drama to get engagement. Controversy is also good however inerestingly enough this video really lacks any controversy (besides the controversy from being so violent, but because it’s so cartoonish no one would really have an opinion). This is so much better than those lame smoking ads where they cut open a liver.

Finally running across the train tracks at night is no longer cool, it’s just a dumb way to die.

P.S. Notice the YouTube video also links to http://dumbwaystodie.com where people can learn more and they even have setup a Tumblr blog – http://dumbwaystodie.tumblr.com/. I wonder how much traffic came to the website from the YouTube video. Anyway, great work.

Joomla and Drupal suck… a guide to website CMS

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So you’re about to start building your website, but it’s good before you head out that you do some planning and research for exactly how you want tos et it up. Of course there’s the standard thought process of the colors you would like to use and the site map. But one thing that many small businesses don’t consider is choosing their CMS platform.

CMS stands for content management system and it basically absolves your web developer of the ability to charge you a pretty penny every time you need some changes made. CMS puts the power to make website changes in your hands in a simple interface that’s as easy as updating your status on Facebook.

Web developers were happy when customers wanted CMS platforms, after all, why not design a CMS platform for a client for $10,000 then charge an extra $5,000 for design? Only problem was soon free CMS platforms were launching such as WordPress, Drupal and Joomla which basically allowed you to have a ready made CMS platform ready for $0.

So then web developers said “Ok, that’s fine. We’ll just design platform specific website layouts and differentiate ourselves.”

Soon however these platforms had a huge developer database with hundreds of ready made templates, some starting at $50.

Ah, the life of a web developer.

Anyway, the point I”m trying to make is that as a consumer you are in a good space. Pick a good CMS platform and choose the right developer and you could have a beautiful looking website that looks like a million bucks for under $1,500.

So let’s talk about what I wanted to mention – the CMS platform war.

You know how some people are into iPhones and some into their Samsung phones? The whole argument is pretty lame but there’s actually a lamer argument out there.

Joomla vs. WordPress vs. Drupal. Basically imagine a bunch of developers sitting around arguing about which CMS platform is the best. The reason I say this argument is sad is that IT REALLY DOESN’T MATTER. As long as you pick a fairly popular CMS platform your website will be fine.

Pick a phone and don’t talk to me about why you picked it lol.

However I just wanted to point out that WordPress is the best =)

Here are the facts:

#1 WordPress is the most popular

#2 WordPress has the most extensions

#3 WordPress hosts some of the largest sites on the internet – Rolling Stones, Paris Hilton’s site, McAfee, Nokia. Honestly if it’s good enough for these companies it’s probably good enough for your business.

Now, some people like Joomla and Drupal and that’s fine. At the end of the day it’s no big deal, they all get the job done but here’s a couple of poins to selecting the best CMS Platform for YOU:

What does your developer use?

If you have a developer that currently manages your website who you have a good relationship with. Ask them what they use. As long as it’s not some CMS platform that no one has heard of go with them. They’ll be able to install it for you and make it look good and can support you if you run into any problems.

Do you have experience?

If you’ve used a CMS platform in a previous job or website use that. Trust me there’s no reason for you to invest hours of time learning WordPress if you are all ready familiar with Joomla. Waste of time.

So at the end of the day it’s up to you what CMS platform you use but I think this screenshot sums it up:


That blue line you see winning is WordPress.

The brown line at the bottom that never had a chance is Drupal.

The red line is Joomla, you’ll notice that at one point it was beginning to catch up in popularity but eventually people stopped caring. You have to ask yourself why.

Look I’ve used Joomla a couple of times (one of my client’s websites was made in Joomla) and I have nothing against it, I really don’t care which CMS platform my clients choose however at the end of the day WordPress is the most popular. And you have to remember it’s not just about getting “what’s hot”, a larger user base means more extensions, a larger pool of WordPress developers (meaning better pricing – supply and demand you know how it goes), a larger plugin/extension directory etc.

WordPress… WINS.

P.S. When I say WordPress I’m not talking about WordPress.com which hosts your website for you, I’m talking about WordPress.org, which gives you the entire WordPress platform that you can download and throw straight on to your server.

The simple lead generation secret… that you don’t have to pay thousands to get

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Lots of people these days are talking about cumbersome and complex lead generation systems. The problem is that the more complex and novel something sounds the more chance it is to get press.

The truth is marketing has a simple foundation and you need to be able to sort the complex from the simple.

In this blog post I’m going to give you a simple strategy that you can start generating leads for your business right now that can be implemented in less than 3 days.

Before I start there are a couple of assumptions I’m going to make (if these don’t fit you then you need another strategy and can feel free to stop reading further):

Assumption #1: You all ready have a reasonable amount of traffic coming to your website

For example, you are a recognized brand (maybe you’ve been around for a while) and for some reason or other you all ready have a fair amount of traffic coming to your website. The traffic comes and stays for a while but you never get an enquiry or an order.

That’s pretty much all the assumptions. Basically I’m saying that this is a strategy to launch after you have acquired some natural traffic through SEO (search engine optimization).

So now that traffic is coming to your website/blog how do you monetize that traffic. The first thing you need to do is build a list of leads, and those leads will eventually become clients.

And I have 2 words for you: pop-up (or is that 1 word?).

Now when I say pop up it’s not what you’re thinking; one of those annoying pop-ups you see of stuff you don’t want and that yo have to close so you can go back to do what you wanted on a particular website. No, I’m going to show you a cool method to create pop ups that

Let me show you what I’ve done with a client recently:

Here is a pop up on a client’s website. Notice a couple of unique things about this pop-up:

1) This pop-up does not open a new browser window and so it annoys the client less. Also this pop-up will only come up once for any website visitor, so whether the visitor chooses to enter their details or not, they will never see the pop-up again unless they request this – this is an important point because if you show the pop-up on every new page of your website not only will your vistors bang their keyboards very loudly but Google can penalize you for providing a poor website experience.

2) The pop up is giving the client something for free – free is good. In this case we are giving away an e-brochure with a product range. A lot of clients will prefer having a PDF version of products when they go on to make a purchase. This helps them.

3) It asks for the client’s details – well this is obvious. However this is what we need.

4) This pop up links to the client’s email/customer database, so that every time a visitor fills in  a form, the client can then build a long term relationship with the visitor.

This may seem like something fairly small and simple however I can tell you that before this was implemented our client was getting very few leads coming through their website (even though they had an incredibly strong brand and positive word of mouth), however upon implementing this simple change I can say that their big problem is now is sorting out and following up on leads – which is a good problem to have!

A website that generates leads is a good website. Make sure you give yourself every advantage, sometimes simple changes can make a big difference and in many cases implementing something like this means you might not have to pay $5,000 to redesign your website to begin generating leads. Little tweaks!