How to Create a Viral Book Trailer (or Get 1,000,000 Views for Almost Anything)

How do you create a viral video?

I am asked this quite a lot. I’ve been asked by authors, TV producers, and first-time Kickstarter entrepreneurs. In my experience, the answers are the same for all of them.

In this post, I’ll deconstruct one example: The 4-Hour Chef (4HC) book trailer, which is now the most-viewed non-fiction book trailer of all time. Roughly 1.5 million views and counting.

First, let’s make a distinction: creating a “viral” video is not the same a creating a “popular” video, but both can be valuable.

If you use ads to drive 1,000,000+ views, a video is not viral; it is popular. If your views come from organic sharing (or incentivized sharing like DropBox), it can be considered viral.

This post is also intended as a companion to my post, Behind the Scenes: How to Make a Movie Trailer for Your Product (or Book), which goes into equipment, planning, and (tons of) other details that I’ve omitted here.

For later — below are resources that will save you a TON of time and tail-chasing…

Feel free to skip the box for now if you like:

VIRALITY RESOURCES:

YouTube Channel stats – http://vidstatsx.com/
Viral video chart – http://viralvideochart.unrulymedia.com/all
Trending videos – http://www.youtube.com/trendsdashboard

Good blog posts on the topic, probably in this order:
-http://gawker.com/5912376/
-http://www.socialh.com/a-little-bit-of-math-measuring-virality/
-http://tinyurl.com/bnowj55

Outlets that cover trends and tools in online video well:
-Reelseo.com
-Tubefilter.com
-http://newmediarockstars.com/

YouTube Creator Playbooks
– http://www.youtube.com/yt/playbook/index.html
– http://www.youtube.com/yt/playbook/guides.html

Now, without further ado, here’s how we got ~1.5 million views for my latest book trailer…

This is like creating a comic book for the trailer, scene by scene. It’s the same process used by Pixar, among many others (video example here).

Here was my first stab for 4HC:

Click here to enlarge the below.

Click here to enlarge the below.

For the 4HC trailer, I brought in several specialists to help with production and promotion.

Please note that a team is nice-to-have and not must-have insurance. To date, my most viral video had zero budget. Here’s what gets you 4-5 million views:

That said, I like to tilt the odds in my favor whenever possible. Here’s my A-Team for doing so when funds allow:

- Directing and post-production – Adam Patch
- PR strategy and implementation – Ryan Holiday and BrassCheck
- Marketing, YouTube influencers, and experimental campaigns – Mekanism (Thanks, Jason and team!)

But how do you choose someone like Adam, if it’s not Adam? You ask for proposals, of course.

Typically, before you hire a production lead like Adam (who also acts as a general contractor for the production team), they will put together a proposal or “treatment”, which includes an itemized budget.

For 4HC, since I’d worked with Adam before, things started with my storyboarding and an in-person lunch with Adam.

Below is the 4HC “treatment,” cobbled together from our subsequent emails and conversations. It gives you a good idea of what you might expect you see:

4-Hour Chef video trailer Treatment

Once you agree on look and feel, you have to roll up your sleeves: it’s time to scout locations, find talent (if needed), and choose specific shots for a to-do list (the “shot list”) that you check off as you film.

Special thanks to Chris Young and the amazing ChefSteps team for letting us use their Mr. Wizard-like food lab in Seattle. We shot the entire trailer in Seattle as a result. Here’s the kind of fun we had (see first 15 secs):

Our full shot list is below. Note that “CU” stands for “close-up”, and “TT” stands for “tabletop”.

Not much to say here, other than shoot a TON of material when you have the chance. It’s easier to edit down than to add extra shooting days.

Below an example of original footage that will be magically changed in the next step. Here we used one of my favorite books as a stand in:

The first step is to cut down hours of footage into 120 or fewer seconds. This is tough but important work.

If you make the finished product look polished enough for broadcast, you might have opportunities (or make opportunities) to get it on major TV. Here’s the process I used to get bookings.

The 4-Hour Chef trailer was featured as my introduction on everything from Dr. Oz to The Hallmark Channel. It’s the perfect adrenaline rush and sales pitch wrapped into one. Especially for short-form TV interviews — typically 3-4 minutes total, with multiple hosts — you’ll be strained to get a word in edgewise. It’s fantastic to let your video hit the talking points, doing the sales job for you.

Now you have a “rough cut” of the trailer. This is first draft, without graphics or special effects.

Once the footage, cuts, and order of scenes is agreed upon, you arrive at “picture lock,” which means that the footage and length can’t be changed. Only at this point does it make sense for anyone to create time-consuming graphics, animation, or sync’d music. Something like this, for instance:

Here’s the complete progression from first “draft” to finished product. Can you tell what changes in each version?

Now that you’ve taken a shot, here’s the full commentary from Adam, taking you though it step-by-step:

And how exactly does Adam work his magic?

Let’s watch how Adam edits the opening atrium scene in The 4-Hour Body trailer, which also has roughly 1,000,000 views. But first, take a look at the finished trailer and notice the opening shot of me at my desk:

Now, we go behind the scenes:

For The 4-Hour Body trailer, I chose music first (Splinter by Sevendust), which I then set visuals to. This turned out to be a licensing headache marathon, and I explain the whole how-to process here. And that was with the band offering it for free! For this new 4HC video, we had custom music produced after the video was complete. The talented Luis Dubuc provided a sync’d jam, and we were ready to roll. No fuss, no muss.

Custom music need not be expensive, and you can even use crowdsourcing with start-ups like Audiodraft. I’ve used them before as well (see here and here).

First, a super basic note on uploading. ENSURE YOUR VIDEO CAN BE VIEWED ON MOBILE DEVICES!

25% of global YouTube views come from mobile devices. I screwed this up for The 4-Hour Body trailer, and I’ve been unable to reverse the mistake and make it viewable on mobile; as a result, I’ve lost hundreds of thousands of views.

No option to change — shite!

So, avoid being a dumb-ass like me and get it right the first time. Back to launching once you’ve uploaded…

The 4-Hour Chef trailer premiered on HuffPo, then it was reposted to my blog here. When I announced the post my Facebook fan page, we promoted it through FB’s paid mechanism. Notice that this was all done on 11/7/12 and 11/8/12 — roughly two weeks before official book launch on 11/20/12.

One of the most effective promotions I did was a unique BitTorrent bundle of 680MB+ of free content. For the super-low labor involved, it drove fantastic numbers:

Watched the trailer on YouTube: 293K people
Visited the author’s website: 325K people
Visited the book’s Amazon page: 852K people

But that was just one piece of the YT traffic puzzle.

When it comes to YouTube, you need to realize what you’re up against in terms of noise: 72 hours of video are uploaded every minute. To capitalize on the opportunity (it’s the second largest search engine in the world), you need to plan. Spray and pray almost never works — your competition is too good.

So, what to do?

First off, do not split your ammo. If you’re considering ads to help drive traffic, do it when it counts: the first 24 hours, when you can combine it with all PR for a synergistic effect. Momentum begets momentum, and early success begets later success. I often pile nearly all book launch media/interviews into a 5-7 day period (Check out this madness).

Team Mekanism was responsible for 99% of all my YT-related PR and directly and indirectly 50%+ of traffic. BitTorrent and my PR that week make up the rest. Mekanism combined extensive PR outreach with early judicious use of TrueView ads and StumbleUpon traffic (Disclosure: I advise StumbleUpon).

Here’s Mekanism’s explanation of what they did, first as PDF with screenshots, then as text:

4 hour chef coverage from Mekanism

Bolded emphasis below is mine:

To help support Tim’s book launch, Mekanism took a three tiered approach: connecting him to relevant online influencers, hosting a contest on Pinterest (to expand his exposure among the female demographic), and promoted content within Slideshare.

[TIM: Slideshare is hugely underused for product launches. We used it for The 4-Hour Body as well.]

Online Influencers:

To drive widespread awareness of The 4-Hour Chef, Mekanism reached out to credible online influencers to help drive word-of-mouth. Mekanism reached out to bloggers and YouTubers across a variety of verticals relevant to each of the different chapters within the book. For example:

• Food Enthusiasts
• Male Lifestyle
• Science + Tech Bloggers
• Mom Bloggers
• Lifehackers

In researching outlets and people, Mekanism took an approach very similar to that outlined by Mike Del Ponte in his Hacking Kickstarter post. The key is establishing relationships, and ensuring your content/message is tailored to each individual blogger’s audience. To accomplish this, Mekanism not only crafted custom pitches, but also provided a wealth of assets that could be freely used: exclusive excerpts, interviews with Tim (live or recorded), his video book trailers, images, etc.

Without a doubt, the most engaged audiences were those of several YouTube stars/channels, specifically SourceFed & WheezyWaiter. These appearances led to thousands of comments and likes and contributed to YouTube being the second largest traffic drive to Tim’s target landing pages.

Slideshare:

We wanted to see if it was possible to get a deck outlining the benefits of the 4-Hour Chef on the homepage of Slideshare, vis a vis having it rank on Slideshare’s ‘Top Presentation’s of the Day’ section. Slideshare was chosen because it has a well-educated and affluent user base that matches the target consumer of The 4-Hour Chef (69% college grads, 37% have $100k+ HHI).

First, a Slideshare deck was created to outline the benefits/chapters of 4HC. Next, we did the math to determine how many views, and in what period of time, were needed to drive the into the ‘Top Presentation’s of the Day’ section. Based on our observations, it seemed as though 15,000 views within a 24-hour period was likely enough.

Having this understanding of required viewing density, we uploaded our deck and promoted it via paid StumbleUpon ads and drove the content to the homepage of Slideshare via “stumbles,” ensuring everyone visiting the site the day of launch saw the presentation.

Keep in mind that the sum is greater than the parts. Here are more of the parts, written in a report to Tim:

“Slideshare Presentation
- Made the ‘Hot on Facebook’ and ‘Hot on Twitter’ section (on homepage)
- Was ‘Featured’ (also on homepage)
- Peaked as 2nd most popular presentation last night

Sourcefed Video
-#3 most liked & top favorited ‘How To & Style’ video of the day
-#5 most viewed ‘How To & Style’ video of the day
-#65 top favorited & most liked video on YouTube today (of all videos across all categories)”

BLOG COVERAGE
http://sourcefednews.com/workout-systems-roundup/
http://www.tubefilter.com/2012/11/19/tim-ferriss-book-trailer-youtube-4-hour-chef/
http://www.dannyroddy.com/main/my-interview-with-bad-ass-mother-fucker-tim-ferriss
http://www.tubefilter.com/2012/11/19/tim-ferriss-book-trailer-youtube-4-hour-chef/
http://www.insidehook.com/nation/tim-ferriss/
http://gearpatrol.com/2012/11/21/tim-ferriss-the-4-hour-chef/
http://www.5minutesformom.com/67553/an-interview-with-tim-ferriss-author-of-the-4-hour-chef/
http://newmediarockstars.com/2012/11/tim-ferriss-interview/

YOUTUBE INFLUENCERS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ggiUlMujSE&list=UU_gE-kg7JvuwCNlbZ1-shlA&index=2&feature=plcp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olSnJC3juXw&feature=youtu.be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw7nZmqiH1I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J8fiuG7z-I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAJBnwBxAWs

The goal of all of this, of course, is to build a rapid view count number that pushes the trailer above the noise. This then propagates into additional organic sharing, all of which sells books.

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So, those are the basics of stacking the deck in your favor for online video. Most posts on “virality” are vague generalities, so I wanted to dig into the weeds. Hopefully you like this.

Are there any other details you’d like to see, or questions you’d like answered? Please let me know in the comments.

Posted on April 10th, 2013

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How to Use 6 Calendar Views to Be More Productive

Project View

In my last article here at Stepcase Lifehack,one of the comments I received suggested that there is a fine way to get around the question of having a “sacred’ calendar.

Popular books like Getting Things Done and others advocate the use of calendars for appointments, trips and other activities that “must” be performed on a particular date. Unfortunately, the word “must” is imprecise, and likely to be interpreted differently by each person.

The principle that they are attempting to reinforce is more clear: don’t populate your calendar with commitments that aren’t firm. Instead, treat the calendar as “sacred” – a place to put commitments that you dare not break.

Fortunately for us, the technology is fast approaching in which you can, at the same time, maintain a “sacred” calendar, a “profane” schedule and every-calendar-in-between!

In Outlook, for example, it’s easy to create, with a few clicks, any number of calendars that cover the same dates. However, because these calendars seem to be different files, it’s easy to believe that they represent different entities.

Not so. Instead, three different calendars of September 2011 are actually three views of the very same set of 30 days.

With that possible snag out of the way, it’s not too hard to see how Outlook and other programs like Google calendar or Yahoo calendar can help us “see” our schedule in ways that can help us to prevent overlaps and miscues, and give us a deeper understanding of the time demands we must confront each day. For example, I have been experimenting with the following 5 views of my schedule. (I didn’t try using them all at once!)

View 1: A “Default” week’s view – before any appointments, deadlines or one-off activities have been created, there is an underlying schedule that I use as the basis for every single week. It includes the basic activities that I need to live my life, and I only move them or delete them in emergencies. These activities include time spent sleeping, eating, exercising and relating to close family members. These are items that I do regardless of the work I do, where I happen to live, or the time of year. For example, going to bed early is important for me due to the triathlon training I do. Before it became a habit, I scheduled the time to go to bed and also set an alarm on my watch to beep at 10:20 pm.

View 2: The “Hard appointments” view – this view consists of scheduled activities planned with other people. The criteria for placing an item in this view is that “there are sharp consequences for myself and others if the appointment is missed.” Dental appointments and coaching calls are examples.

View 3: The “Deadline” view – when there are deadlines I have that produce negative consequences if they are forgotten, they are placed within this view (e.g. due-dates for my company’s tax deposits)

View 4: The “Blank-time” view – this is the time that I schedule each day for the unexpected. These slots of dead time act as buffer against all the things that can go wrong, and their length and frequency depends on the environment I’m in, and the kind of work I’m doing. For example, I have found it difficult to schedule work on travel days, so I would set up huge chunks of dead time in the expectation that something is likely to go wrong. If nothing goes wrong, then it’s easy to reach into future days for time demands that I can start working on now. Using this view helps to prevent (but might not cure) the popular fault of over-scheduling, which most ambitious people commit.

View 5: The “Activity” view – in my last article,I focused on the switch that needs to be made by people who have a great number of time demands i.e. from learning to place tasks rather than lists. The Activity view is the one in which the most action takes place as time demands that come into my life are placed directly in my calendar. Most of the schedule juggling that happens each day takes place in this view.

Viewing a single schedule in five different ways can be quite confusing to those of us who think of calendars in the traditional, paper-based way. Throw in the ability to access your scheduled time demands on your laptop, smartphone and tablet and you may realize that there’s a need to see calendars and schedules quite differently…. perhaps as a set of tasks that are organized by date and time, that reside in the cloud. At any point in time, the calendar-view you are looking at is filtering tasks, and helping you to focus on the few at a time that you really need to see.

This filtering is important… it might never make sense to combine all the views in one, any more than it makes sense to watch more than one television channel at a time… even with the latest PiP technology. Each view serves a different purpose, providing a layer of information that’s important to maintain separately from the others, or to combine selectively. For example, I combine the “Default” view with the “Activities” view on a day to day basis, while I use the “Blank-time” view as a planning tool that’s filtered out once my day starts.

Of course, there could be other views. For example, Dezhi Wu’s groundbreaking research suggests another possible view for Projects. In her book, “Temporal Structures in Individual Time Management” she explains that a project manager should be able to craft a schedule of activities for each team member that can be downloaded right into a planning device. To me, this suggests an additional view is coming.

View 6: The “Project view” – when you have a group of inter-connected tasks that are designed to produce a particular result. It would be nice to take a look at each project as a separate thread of activity. You could see, for example, what happens in your life when there’s a change in final due dates. This is a far cry from the mental, unreliable estimates that often fly around.

Unfortunately, the core technology of managing multiple views isn’t maintained on all calendars. My Blackberry’s calendar doesn’t allow for multiple views from one program. Hopefully apps are on the way that will correct this, and allow me to synchronize different views with the cloud.

However, with tools that are already available, it’s possible to keep a “sacred” calendar if it’s seen as merely one possible view to manage. With improved tools, we could do much more scheduling and less listing, even as we stick to the GTD principle of maintaining and managing firm commitments. Doing so would help relieve us of the job of juggling our calendars in our minds, and delegate the task to tools tapped into the cloud.

P.S. I used Yahoo!.Calendar to generate these views, and the instructions for doing can be found here.

I'm an advocate of Time Management 2.0 - the idea that we all need unique methods to be personally productive, and need to keep upgrading them throughout our professional careers to maintain our peace of mind.

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