Lisa Salem reports -

Interesting post over at Chris Anderson’s Long Tail blog about how your project can still be a raging success when only 1 - 0.1% of your audience participate in your content in the way you’ve set out for them to - because the number of people the internet makes potentially accessible is so vast. He cites Wikipedia and You Tube as good examples of this - the latter being where only 0.1% of users upload videos and yet obviously this being more than enough to make You Tube the commodity that it is. It brings to mind something I’ve been brooding on for a while now relating to the stats for Radiohead’s remix competition for their single ‘Nude’. When they launched their follow-up remix competition for ‘Reckoner’ they supplied these numbers (of user interactivity levels) in their newsletter for how the previous competition had gone:

  • Unique visitors: 6,193,776
  • Number of mixes: 2,252
  • Number of votes: 461,090
  • Number of track listens: 1,745,304

These numbers roughly translate as:

  • 0.04% of individuals entered their own remixes (4 in every 10,000 people)
  • 7.4% voted on their favorites tracks (740 people in 10,000) and
  • 28.2% (2820 in 10,000) listened to those tracks.

Moreover, about 35% did something. 65% did nothing other than check out the site. And yet Radiohead happily described these stats as a huge success for their competition. SO WHAT CONSTITUTES SUCCESS? Similar to Anderson’s post, when you’re dealing with audience numbers at the Radiohead level, of course this really is a raging success. Especially considering that presumably the chief purpose of their competition was to bring attention to their single outside of the context of their already previously promoted album ‘In Rainbows’ (and also to do the whole thing directly, not through a record company). Because of this, it’s parameters of success aren’t strictly in how many people actually participated, but in having enough people participate to create a platform for wider attention for the single. It’s not the measly 0.04% who entered remixes (and 0.04% isn’t so measly when it’s 2,252 mixes), or even the 28% who listened to the song, the success is in the 6 million people who engaged with the song in any way at all - with the competition as the excuse to do so - and that enough people interacted with the site in some way to generate an audience that grows exponentially as a result. But if you apply these same numbers to mere mortals - independent content creators who might be lucky to get 10,000 visitors to their site - 4 people participating in a remix competition just isn’t gonna cut it. SO HOW CAN YOU USE THESE STATS TO SERVE YOU IF YOU’RE NOT RADIOHEAD? Well, that’s what I’ve been thinking about… Probably all you can do is be savvy. Be aware of the numbers and buffer yourself and your project with them in mind. Be sharper in general about what helps any project of this kind be successful. Different elements likely come into play, and understanding the most relevant and necessary ones for you is important. Covering as many bases as possible might also be a good idea.

  • Do you focus on cutting down the barriers to entry - making it as easy, simple and tempting as possible for people to participate?
  • Do you focus on widening your net as much as possible - being fastidious about letting as wide as possible a range of potentially interested users know about what you‚Äôre doing?
  • Do you focus on establishing a solid relationship with your core audiences - creating loyalty and building trust, and hoping that that passes off into something where the audience itself disseminates what you‚Äôre doing for you?
  • Do you create interactive entities that still work, are still engaging, with these statistics in mind - works that only need a low percentage of users to actually interact in order to be successful?
  • Do you create timelines for your projects that allow usership to build and grow - time for word to spread and for people to bond with the concept of you and what you‚Äôre doing?
  • Do you compensate for your humble status by creating interactive elements that have such a high capacity for spreadability built into the infrastructure of how users interact that your audience, just by interacting, gives you access to a much wider net of people?
  • Do you use real ingenuity to gain attention and momentum out of your innovating - using the built-in audience that innovation itself has to access a much wider pool?

Obviously, the answer must be yes to any and all of these - dependent on the nature of what you’re doing.

  • Mostly though, it must be about being aware of what constitutes success for your project. Knowing why you‚Äôre doing it and what you hope to achieve. Keeping it realistic and keeping the hooks that will really engage your audience sharp. Good content is often it‚Äôs own marketing tool - but relying on that is another thing altogether.

THIS ISN‚ÄôT PARTICULAR TO INDEPENDENT CONTENT CREATORS THOUGH All of these are things Radiohead or anyone else would have to do in order to have a successful project - except smaller fish have a need to do them even better if they‚Äôre to keep their heads above water (okay, bad analogy). AND NOR ARE THEY PARTICULAR TO ISSUES OF PARTICIPANT/PASSIVE USER RATIOS They‚Äôre integral to connecting with an audience/community/users at all‚Ķ To find out how to build and keep your own audience make sure to visit WBP’s POLLINATE the site has insight, interviews and an extensive ever evolving “how-to”…

LISA SALEM set out to walk the whole of LA pushing a baby-stroller with a video-camera attached to the end of it, facing inwards. When people approached her, she invited them to walk with her while she videoed their conversations. She posted those videos to a blog and in the process attracted a large and intrigued audience to what she was doing. Since then, Lisa’s been looking at the process of audience-building in detail. She lives in London now and when not working on her film-portrait of Los Angeles “WALK LA WITH ME”, she runs workshops that help filmmakers be more independent.