Guidelines for Watching and Posting Footbag vids on YouTube

[Iron Clad Ben]

Hi Everyone,
I wanted to put this post together because I see YouTube as a huge untapped resource for promoting the sport of footbag. We use it on a regular basis to post and watch videos, but I don't think we are using to its full potential.

There are many ways the community can help to get good footbag videos more exposure:

Watching:
1) COMMENT! Most everyone loves to get props. Also, more comments means more visibility and a chance to get honors. (Note: you need a YouTube account to comment, so if you don't have one, create one so you can at least comment and rate even if you don't post videos)
2) RATE! Let em know what you think. Ratings are a huge determinant in what videos get honors.
3) RESPOND with one of your own videos. This will increase visibility for both their video and yours.

Posting:
1) Post a detailed description along with links to footbag.org, flipsider.com etc. If someone comes across your video and is interested, it may be their only chance to find more out about footbag.
2) Use KEYWORDS TAGS. These are huge determinants in what videos come up in searches. Also some people subscribe to actual keywords. Don't be a keyword-whore but anything in your video should have a keyword. Examples: hacky, hackey, footbag, action, extreme, sports, jam, NYC (or whatever place your video took place in)
3) Post your videos AS RESPONSES to other videos. If you want to be daring, post it to an unrelated video that has been featured. If you have a series of videos (e.g. Ken or Erik short diary vids) post them as responses to each other in series, so that people can easily navigate through the series.

How it all works and why...
Views, Honors and being Featured:
So the ultimate goal here is VISIBILITY of footbag videos (and by sharing our videos on YouTube I assume we're aiming for this). YouTube Honors ('honours' to you Canadians) are what we're after. These are given to videos that are:
Most Viewed
Highest Rated
Most Discussed (commented on)
Most Responded (video responses)
Most Favorited
Within in a given time frame (today, this week, this month, all time) and by country. So that is why it is so important to rate, comment and respond. These "honored" videos make it on to YouTube top 10 lists and come up more often in searches. Also, lots of honors mean a chance for getting FEATURED. If a footbag video ever gets featured our ship will have come in. It will be on the front page of YouTube for about a week. It can expect several hundred thousand views and thousands of comments during that time.

Thoughts and comments?

[EoghanMcDowell]

Sounds like a great guide. I'll be sure to remember this stuff the next time I'm surfing the tube.

[Rieferman]

Great post Ben. I'd agree with your opinion that this is a good vehicle to gain exposure.

Question: It seems to me the "reply with a video" feature would be a really good tool in these ways as well (but correct me if I'm misunderstanding how it works):
- Whenever you see a lame video by someone that clearly doesn't know what footbag is about, but is somehow getting a lot of views, you could get them redirected to another alternative to consider.

- For good vids, you could piggy back off the success by replying with one of our well known videos. If our community's videos are already similarly linked as described in your post, you'd end up continually leading people into a "network" of good vids to really get them hooked.

Is that about how it works?

Also, I think you should propose an 'action item' to the modified community that has posted worthy vids (by "worthy" I don't mean the 'hey look at my latest and help me improve some concepts' vids, I mean the vids that are really showcasing your game)

The action item might be: "If you have posted some good shred vids in the past 6 months, please link them [insert proper terminology] to X number of other Y types of vids within the next 2 week"

[slapdash21]

always put "hardcore sex" as a tag as well. ha, kidding. i dont really recommend that.

but you CAN, as ben already somewhat mentioned, put in a huge number of tags that cover a wide array of related topics. you never know who will see your video while looking for something else and watch it and like it. so always put extreme sports, hacky sack moves, sick hacko sacko blah blah etc.

definitely an important topic ben. i was thinking about this recently myself, because i noticed some people do a really good job drawing attention to the videos they put on youtube and some dont.

[Benzilla]

[quote="slapdash21"]always put "hardcore sex" as a tag as well. ha, kidding. i dont really recommend that.

[\quote]


aw why not??


But really, this is a good thread. I always try to post my thoughts when i can.

[Iron Clad Ben]

So now, thanks to the Awesomeness of our wonderful admin Mike, you can now...

EMBED YOUTUBE VIDEOS IN MODIFIED POSTS!

Ya just put the YouTube URL between youtube tags like so:

Code: Select all

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stFzT6rtquY[/youtube]

and there ya go...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stFzT6rtquY[/youtube]

[Zeb Jackson]

sick ben! how did we not figure this out before?!

[jay7]

For anyone who can't be bothered with getting and remembering a Youtube account name, you can use your Gmail login as well.

I have forgotten and lost my previous youtube account about 12 times, due to the only name I could actually select was something like RHSnasd6....

[C-Fan]

Pretty much everytime I log into YouTube, I enter hacky sack in the search field and sort by date. Every time I see a newbie hack video, I post a text comment encouraging them and mentioning footbag, and then I post a video response to one of my vids (I have posted over 120 vids, so there's no shortage of them). I've already had some responses, and even if people don't respond, at least they get some exposure to what's possible with footbag.

I also recommend that when people watch any footbag video, to always rate it, and always rate it 5 stars. I think the way YouTube selects related videos is somehow tied to this.

[Jeremy]

Great advice.

Something else I'd recommend; if people dis footbag, don't get involved in name calling or personal attacks. You shouldn't try to make them look bad, you should try and make footbag look good. So give mature comments on the topic that they're attacking; not on their intelligence, literacy skills, mother or anything else. Mature responses look a lot better than immature responses.

[brian relly]

It will be on the front page of YouTube for about a week. It can expect several hundred thousand views and thousands of comments during that time.

Thoughts and comments?

cool, we can read more retards type about how gay hacky sack is. this has potential.

eta: i thought of another benefit - this will attract more of the kind of losers that would look at the front page of youtube and less actual people who, you know, only go to a page if someone sends them a link or if they're searching for something specific. making progress!

[C-Fan]

If our efforts result in getting one person to learn about footbag and get into the sport, then it's worth 1000 idiots calling us gay. Takumi learned about footbag because of the Pepsi promotion we ran in Japan in 2003, and Ryan Mulroney learned about footbag because of some stupid MTV spot. Would you have preferred if those 2 promotions hadn't happened, just because (undoubtedly) several thousand people thought footbag was dumb?

Seriously Stephen, are you drunk or something?

PS: it didn't help that when I read your post, the banner on my screen was the shot from Worship the Sack when you are drunk.

[brian relly]

lol and i am drunk. its the night after prom and i have a decent amount of soco left over. just got off a 14 hour shift. you knowww . im playing a game with myself where i take a shot every time my router cuts out... im less and less pissed about it every time!!


sorry for going off topic. i'll throw out another idea. i thought of this a long time ago when i actually still played. let me know if it doesn't make sense please.

this occurred to me when i only had a digital camera that recorded some video.. not like an actual video camera. so i would just turn it on for one completely random run during a session. one shot, no second chances. so its sort of an idea of how consistent you are. you only have one shot to get a good run on video during said session, so you better make it good right? it will happen a lot where you just drop after 3 contacts, or it's like, not a run you'd be okay with showing to people... but you have to! it's like a random sampling of how consistent you'd be during an actual session. I think this is a cool idea considering EVERY video is so meticulously selected for the best runs/cleanest shit/whatever bullshit you nerds care about... i think, let's start a series of videos where we showcase peoples' regular, IRL, consistency.

Ok, so i feel like the above was just a bunch of random drunken babbling. let me break it down into steps if you don't quite understand/didnt want to read a bunch of BULLSHIT haha.

1. start playing hacky sack. bring your camera with you.
2. when you start feeling pretty good/warmed up/whatever, turn the camera on. if you think you got a good run in ya, start recording!
3. once you start rolling, you've got ONE shot with the bag. if you fluke and drop, TOO BAD SUCKA. it happens. if it's rad.... COOL!
4. POST IT! regardless of what we will see/make fun of you for
5. it'll be good practice for trying to step up to a pro circle!. yeah! whos with me??

looking forward to everyone's positive responses! who thinks my spelling/grammar is actually not that bad for a drunk? i'm really smart and if you don't believe it STEP YOUR GAME UP SUCKA WATCH OUT FOR SB IN 08. GOT BIG PLANS! ME AND SP ARE ABOUT TO BE OWNING YOUR SHIT. watch out!!!!!!