There’s a Youtube channel that I’ve been following since 2008. Like many channels, most Youtube videos only get a couple dozen views at most when they start. In one year, this channel would rack up an average of 100,000 views per day. Today, the each daily video gets over 400,000 views on average within the first 2 days of posting.
Whether you’ve heard of this channel or not, it’s the SHAYTARDS. A man decided to pick up daily video blogging a few years ago, simple family videos. His success and popularity was not intentional. Shay Carl never expected his videos consisting of his family and daily life to gather so much traffic. Since his video blogging days began, Shay’s family (who used to struggle with living pay check to pay check), now owns a large house, paid off all their debt, gets paid for making Youtube videos, and receive free gifts from sponsors(eg. flip cameras, Google TV, candles, etc.). Shay also partnered with other Youtube stars to make videos and now works his dream job.
Shay never marketed for himself in any way. All he does is upload videos, and the rest does itself. So what could explain the overwhelming popularity for his vlogging? Youtube and word-of-mouth, in my opinion. Youtube has helped the SHAYTARDS grow in ways other than simply hosting the videos. Every time a SHAYTARDS video would hit the main page, the video views would skyrocket to 700,000-1,000,000+ views.
The other factor, word-of-mouth, also helps bring in traffic. For example, I’ve shown my friends the videos and here I am writing a blog about it. I’ve ‘liked’ their official page on Facebook, so my Facebook friends could see it as well. Shay never asked me to do this, I do it because I love his Youtube videos so much.
I’d say that this is a perfect example of crazy loyal advocates marketing for free. It’s clear to me why companies aim to capture loyal customers so that they could swim in the benefits that word-of-mouth can bring.