Tanya Ferrell is Passing Notes.

I discovered this video via johanna @ naked. It’s amazing. The synching is incredible. And I’ve watched it at least 20 times. I can’t stop myself.

For the sake of staying on topic, watch me relate Walk it Out Fosse Style to internet marketing.Can you make a viral video? From what I’ve read, a lot of clients are asking their ad agencies to make viral videos for them. Impossible. It doesn’t work that way. You can make a good video, and it may go viral, it may not. You have no control over that.You can do a few simple things to gain some extra views though.Instead of posting your video to the vastness that is YouTube, try posting your video as a response to a more popular and relevant YouTube video, so that there’s a link to your video every time someone views the popular one. When choosing tags for the video, find other relevant and popular videos and use the same or similar tags. With any luck, your video will be listed in the Related Videos section. It’s basically piggybacking off another video’s success, and there’s nothing wrong with that, especially if your video is good.

It sounds like basic stuff, but I think some marketers are in such a rush to get their video onto YouTube that they overlook the simple things.

Good Example: Two no-names on YouTube were able to gain 4,000-7,000+ views for very crappy videos because they tried to walk it out fosse style and used appropriate tags. Their videos are in the related videos sections of the original 180,000+ viewed video.

Bad Example: There’s this great video, created by Steve Delahoyde of Coudal Partners, about a guy that is inspired by the song “Spoonman” and wants to become a spoons player. It’s an awesome video - well written and filmed, but hasn’t gotten as much attention as I think it deserves. The tags on the video: regrets, funny, angry, loud, schadenfreude, sandy, marshall. What do these tags have to do with the video? Not much. With tags like Soundgarden, Spoonman, Spoons, McGee, etc…anyone interested in the song “Spoonman” could have found the the video and Steve could have piggybacked off the success of a 25,000+ viewed video of Soundgarden playing the song live.

In summary: Stop using tags that don’t make sense. Stop posting videos without looking to see what’s already on YouTube. When you post your video, try to connect it to as many relevant videos as possible.