I have never had anything I put on the web quite reach ‘viral’ proportions, but I’ve had a few online successes. One thing is certain, it is hard to beat having celebrity exposure. Yesterday, a British actor called David Schneider posted a call for “Enterprise Under Attack” videos, and my digital media students obliged with our classroom attack video.
As of this morning, our tweet of the video had 27 retweets and 78 likes on Twitter.
Some lessons learned include:
- Share something fun, timely, and relevant with someone having a large following. David Schneider has 262K followers.
- Make it a good idea if not good quality.
- We only had a few minutes of class time for this activity. We got a new USB Elmo camera in the classroom. It has a flexible stand which made rotating the room a cinch. Also, our new, wheeled chairs have been a student favorite on our tile floors since we got them. I also added a Star Trek sound-effect to the YouTube video, but it was our soundless animated GIF that is getting the attention.
- It is worthwhile to share your work. Sometimes people will pay attention and appreciate it.
I will need to think about my strategy regarding interacting with celebrities. Honestly, I don’t follow many, and haven’t made a regular practice of corresponding with them, but the few times that I have have generally been positive.