A YouTube video which went viral at warp factor 9!

Case study overview

One of my hobbies is designing, building and flying radio control airplanes which are defined by “anything that has a motor on it and flies.”

My other hobby is shooting videos, creativly editing them, and then uploading them to my YouTube channel.

Case study overview“Anything that has a motor on it and flies.” A friend of mine built a model of the USS Enterprise out of foam. Being a fellow Treker, I couldn’t wait to shoot and edit this video.

Case study: The productCreatively editing would be important in getting the video noticed. I utilized some Star Trek sound effects and the main title music to produce the final product.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnfICRc0Jz0

Case study: Getting viewsAfter uploading it to my YouTube channel, the next task was to get people to watch it. Since it is relevant to radio controlled aircraft hobbyists, I posted links on the two major sites covering the topic. RC Universe (Peak UV’s: 258K) and RC Groups (Peak UV’s: 282K)*. Views started adding up but started peaking around 10K.

*Source: Compete

Case study: Getting viewsI wanted more views so I looked for others sites which a video related to Star Trek would resonate with visitors such as geek.com (Peak UV’s: 748K*) and views started rising but again started to peak, this time at around 25K.

*Source: Compete

Case study: Getting viewsAmong the other sites I discovered was Myouterspace.com started by William Shatner, yes, Capt. Kirk himself for the sci fi community where it was discovered by one of the members. Views started rising at warp factor 9. This one generating just over 22K.

*Source: Compete

Case study: Getting viewsWhile traffic is small on this site, it was Shatner himself who tweeted it (834K followers) and sent views into the next star system well above 50K!

Case study: Lessons learnedFor a CPG company, or retailer, making a video go viral would be much less of a challenge since there would be a larger universe of people to draw from where as I did not. The key to getting the views for me was finding sites/sources which were not directly related to the hobby.

It has been 2 years since this video was uploaded and while it is nearing the end of its life cycle, it still receives about 4K views a month.