YouTube Viral Videos
How they can affect your SEO
There was an excellent article by Seth Godin about last week’s viral events, two of which were videos. Today I take a look at the DollarShaveClub.com video. If you haven’t seen it I’ve embedded it below. It’s bloody funny and if you’re a bloke you’ll want to buy.
SImple Concept
Whilst the subscription model for clothing and other items has already been done, I love this idea for razors. As you know I have a LOT to shave and razors cost around $6 – $7 ea and I have to remember to buy them. Dollarshave is not available in Australia but if it was I’d join. The genius though was in the launch video. MIchael Dubin, founder of Dollarshave studied and performed sketch comedy for 10 years in New York before launching Dollarshave. His brilliant performance is what makes the video work. THe video cost $4500 to make and has generated over 3 million views in a week.
Traffic Jam
Unfortunately for Michael and his team of 5, the site crashed under load. Can you imagine? Getting it right on your promotion but not being able to service the customers you’ve already sold on your idea. According to an interview in Bloomberg Business Week, Dollarshave got 5000 paid subscribers in their first week. Not bad but that is less than 0.2% of the people that watched the video. I’m sure he had hundreds of thousands hit the site but they just couldn’t buy. If you are about to do a big launch and are hoping for a traffic spike, Google gives some good advice on how to prepare.
Google Authorship
Dollarshave didn’t link their Youtube account up to a Google Profile account either. As I’ve said before, Authorship is the new Page Rank and having a popular video like the Dollarshave one would do wonders for your author-ity. If a lot of people like your content, Google wants to show it more often where it is relevant to a search. Hope you enjoy today’s vid.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
