Bob,

Besides the observations on the 'team' and the efforts necessary to seed social media in the right way, I have some comments.

You say that you aren't trying to get more hits on YouTube, but that is exactly what you are asking about in this thread.

Success on YouTube seems to me to stem from one of several sources besides a team pushing from behind (though this is probably necessary anyways):

1. There is truly something visually that has not been seen before by the first viewer, who tells his/her friends to watch the video because the novelty of the video simply asks to be shared. The process follows the exponential growth algorithm: 1 shares with 5, 5 share with 5 each, repeat ad nauseum.

I have watched your YouTube videos and I think you would agree that the video content offers nothing that would fit the 'novelty' aspect of this particular reason for going viral.

For an example of musical novelty; one of the most popular music videos of the past couple years was Walk Off The Earth's cover of Gotye's song where they made it look/sound like they performed the whole song live playing on one acoustic guitar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9NF2edxy-M over 154 million views. I don't know how many times someone forwarded me a link to this particular YouTube video back when it had well under 1 million views. It 'blew up' over a very short time and for very good reason.

2. Physical attractiveness of youth/animals, whether this falls into the 'cute' category or romantic interest category, this is something that always has and will always drive attention. For most of us over 40 years old, unless we are a visual double for Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt or Jennifer Aniston, we can kind of cross this off as a potential driver of YouTube views. No harm or shame in admitting this.

3. Challenges to our psycho-social response, where the opposite of #2, is coupled with musical talent so raw and rich that our misconceived notions that only 'beautiful' people can make beautiful sounds - this causes us to question our natural preconceived notions and we share the video with friends as a sort of novelty, but this time it is adjoined to talent.

Examples: Paul Potts, Susan Boyle, this boy named Jonathan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7knUFWY2P44

I share it again, because I admit that if I passed Jonathan on the street, I wouldn't expect that his voice could give me goosebumps like it does. Add one more view to the 22 million plus views this video has in this one copy.

I bought Paul Potts' "One Chance" CD, and I have to say, it does not have the same impact to me as watching him sing any of the renditions of Nessun Dorma that are on YouTube from the Britain's Got Talent show - because that part of my brain that is challenged by the mis-match of sound with my judgmental nature of his appearance with his bad teeth and all, does not happen by just listening.

4. Songs that lyrically or musically connect on such a deep level that it stirs the emotions to cause others to claim "that song was written for me - I must share". This is where you could yield some fruit from your efforts. Keep trying.

Maybe sign up for the Pat Pattison songwriting course from Berklee/Coursera - it might still be open to new students. It's free. His tips can help you fine tune your lyrics for getting success in category 4. Note that I can't speak from personal success here - few of us on this forum can speak from that perspective, so maybe we are not even the right people to ask.

-Scott

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