Ok, it’s not viral, but it’s my best stat so far.

And it’s not about cats, fantastic feats or anyone famous.

It so happens to be the video review I did for the Sony HXR NX 30.

Turns out a lot of people have been interested in that camera.

It was the first-ever video review I ever did for a camera, and since I was a bit jazzed, I guess it came off okay. But the main reason I did the video was that I was disappointed in many of the reviews I had seen (even though I was sold on the camera), so I decided to do one from the point of view of a cameraman, not a geek. I wanted to put into it the sort of things I would have like to have seen myself.

Some Key Points

I also made sure that the automated transcript that YouTube generated was corrected and uploaded.  (related post: YouTube Drops a Bomb)

I gave it a relevant title, which was pretty simple, because it said exactly what it was.

I also gave it relevant keywords.

Because it was well-received it got a lot of likes and almost as many comments (over 90 to date).

I made sure to answer every comment (and found out my replies counted as comments).

The interaction that occurred apparently caused Google to rank it high for relevance in organic searches.

Consequently my blog (this one) started received the vast majority of hits from Google organic searches by a factor of 8X. (the main source used to be Linkedin). In fact, as a result, this relatively new blog will also hit 10,000 views this week though 7500  of those views were of other articles.

On quality, I should say that I at least took the time to light the shot, dress nicely and record good sound using a lapel mic. It was shot on my Canon DSLR as I was using the Sony as a prop in the shot. (the Sony’s face recognition auto-focus would have done a better job, but overall the communication value over-rode any of the occasional technical errors on focus as I moved forward and backward in the shallow depth of field of the shallow depth of field DSLR).

“Audience Retention”

I should further point out that in reviewing the “Audience Retention” YouTube metric, I can see that 33% of the viewers watched the entire 14 minute video. About half watched 7-8 minutes–still quite a long time. Ideally, of course, that metric would be near 100%, but what this tells me is that the video was highly relevant and interesting to over 3000 people, so I can consider it a success for the niche it addressed.  I also know, by feedback, that quite a few people bought the camera because of this review, not other reviews. And, of course, I can study that audience retention graph and try to determine if there was any significant reason people started dropping off about half way through for consideration in the next video. It could be simply that’s not the type of camera they’re looking for and therefore no need to change anything. I have to consider the intended public. Some might realize it’s a Mini Cooper S when they were looking for an Aston Martin.

“Engagement” Counts, Not “Views”

Most of you may know by now that the “views” metric is no longer considered highly relevant for offering up organic search results. Mainly because that metric has been gamed (manipulated) for so long.  Viewing time (length of time watched) is now considered an important metric for determining ENGAGEMENT. Add to that the number of “likes”, the number of times “favourited”, the number of times “shared” and the number of “comments” (which includes your replies to the comment) and the number of people who then “subscribed” to the channel (in this case, 77 new subscribers to date),  and you have a truer picture of the engagement value of the video and its relevancy to search results. The higher all those factors combined, the higher it will rank for that general search result.

Update : 17 September Part 2 of the Sony HXR review (second video in that article), uploaded 3 months ago  just hit 5000 views last night.

Update 23 September: The Trifecta. Today this blog reached 10,000 views. Now I know these are not big numbers, but is relevant to the point of this article about a video that ticks most of the engagement boxes. The Sony review video got 2680 total views on this blog. (The other 7770, as of this date, were on YouTube). As a direct result I got about double the number of subscribers on both the blog and on the YouTube channel. The actual YouTube engagement numbers at this date for that video are: 97 likes, 71 comments, 8 shares, 27 favorited and 81 new subscribers.

Obviously the next game is to top that.

Any suggestions?