Followers or Hits?

I was talking with another filmmaker yesterday about an upcoming project we're working on. He mentioned a video that someone had sent him that had something like 20,000 hits already, but, he admitted, it wasn't anything special and wasn't even that good.

So why did it have 20,000 views and our latest project had less than 600? What causes things to get passed around? What makes things popular?

That is the subject of books like "The Tipping Point", and worthy of much study. But I raised a different question: Is that really what we, as media producers, want?

For example: Numa Numa has 13 million views in that YouTube rendition alone. 13 million. Dag.

But what else has Gary done, except get on a Wikipedia page? Sure, millions of people have seen his video, but his other attempts to repeat this flopped.

Now, sure, it's cool to get millions of hits, and I'd welcome it. But if I had to choose between 13 million hits on one of my videos, or a consistently strong following from the stuff I produce (think Shyamalan or Spielberg), then I'd be much happier with hundreds of thousands of followers over a few million hits.

The problem is I currently get, at most, 10 hits a day... with maybe that many followers. It's a start, but I'd like to help more people. And, hopefully, if you produce good content "hits" will convert to "followers". At least, that's my current plan.

~Luke Holzmann
Your Media Production Mentor