Audience Building Lessons form SXSW

South by South West: What a week! Music, internet and film all rolled into one overwhelming “un-conference conference,” punctuated by official and unofficial parties every night throughout downtown Austin. Standouts from the week included sessions on ad networks for web publishers, a case study on the lonelygirl15 phenomenon and mobilizing the masses with SMS, winner of “Best use of an alliteration in a SXSW session” two years running

I also managed to catch a SXSW Jury Award winning documentary called, An Audience of One, directed by Michael Jacobs, two musical performances from Chris Pierce and a kick-butt set from The Little Ones at “Yahoo! Bar Tab.”

But perhaps the most interesting from a publisher’s perspective was the lonelygirl15 case-study (I never caught onto the craze). Namely, just how did they create the following, initially? If you looked at the lonelygirl15 vlogs they weren’t necessarily stand-outs among all other other vlogs that launched daily on YouTube. According to the case study, lonelygirl115 gained popularity through means that seem pretty clever but which almost anyone with enough time and diligence can employ:

1. lonelygirl15 began ‘friending’ other YouTube users, creating a social network.
2. lonelygirl15, or its producers, next sought out popular videos and began commenting on them with regularity (creating name-recognition among an even broader audience of those who are viewing these popular videos.
3. lonelygirl15 began posting “her” own videos and her “friends” began posting responses and the masses who view popular videos linked through to her after reading her previous comments…the rest is history….huge traffic and a loyal fan-base.

The power of social networks helped lonelygirl15 reach the critical mass. Once lonelygirl15 was “outed” and everyone discovered that she was an actress, the episodic adventure changed and it has now become an “ARG” or Alternate Reality Game in which the vlog has its viewers attempt to solve mysteries along with the cast of the lonelygirl15 world. Like all ARG’s, lonelygirl15 blurs the lines between the real-world and fake world, but her fans are along for the ride.

Check out all the SXSW pictures on Flickr.

—Marc Levin, Marketing Maven