A while back, a client asked me if I’d seen “that video on the web, with the guys dancing.” I knew exactly which video he meant: OK Go’s “A Million Ways,” one of the most popular downloads of 2005.

It looks easy — create a little choreography, buy a video camera and some cassettes, and shoot. But if it were easy, everyone would be doing it.Well, alright, everyone is doing it. More than 65,000 videos are uploaded to YouTube daily. But not all those videos are good enough to make people want to email them to everyone they know.

So the big question: Can you learn to create an incredibly contagious viral video? Yes!

Watch the commercial for the Viral Learning Center.

I’m sure that anyone who enrolls at the Viral Learning Center will be well on the way to a great career … maybe even on broadcast television!

(Link thanks to Steve Garfield/Off On a Tangent.)

Superblogger Robert Scoble offers a nice list of things to do to make your blog better … which will lead also to building your audience and getting them involved.

Here’s the list in brief, and you can read the details at the original post:

1. Know how traffic will find you.
2. Pick a niche and own it.
3. Get specific with your title tag.
4. Demonstrate authority.
5. Use more media.
6. Link to other bloggers you like (or hate).
7. Use bullets and numbers. Copy Guy Kawasaki.
8. Hold a contest.
9. Beg for help from other bloggers.
10. Write better headlines.
11. Cause some heck.
12. Maryam and I put 15 other ways up over on the Blog Business Summit’s site.
13. Get Shelley Powers to link to you.

The comments to the post offer many other great ideas too. One especially good one points out that you must also have interesting, well-written content.

As much as I respect Robert’s ideas about blogging, I confess that I don’t regularly read his blog. The ratio of topics I’m interested in to those I’m not interested in is too low — and the total number of items is so high, I don’t have enough time to deal with it. Now and again I add him back to my feedreader, but then after a while I get worn out just skimming the posts and I take him off again. (Of course, now that I’ve linked to him, I feel I should give it another shot….)

But so, what does that say about the validity of the ideas on this list? Just that even if you do everything perfectly in setting up and running a blog, it’s still going to appeal only to some people. And that’s fine: They are your audience, and you’ll have created a great on-going conversation with them.

(Thanks to Steve Garfield/Off On A Tangent for the link.)

The latest development in the world of “citizen journalism”: News services are inviting photographs and video from anyone, anywhere.
As explained in the New York Times (“Have Camera Phone? Yahoo and Reuters Want You to work for Their News Service,” 12/4/06):

The Yahoo-Reuters project will create a systematic way to incorporate images covering a wider range of topics into news coverage.

Starting [December 5], users will be able to upload photos and videos to a section of Yahoo called You Witness News (news.yahoo.com/page/youwitnessnews). All of the submissions will appear on Flickr or a similar site for video. Editors at both Reuters and Yahoo will review the submissions and select some to place on pages with relevant news articles, just as professional photographs and video clips are woven into their news sites today.

“People don’t say, ‘I want to see user-generated content’,” said Lloyd Braun, who runs Yahoo’s media group. “They want to see Michael Richards in the club. If that happens to be from a cellphone, they are happy with a cellphone. If it’s from a professional photographer, they are happy for that, too.”

Users will not be paid for images displayed on the Yahoo and Reuters sites. But people whose photos or videos are selected for distribution to Reuters clients will receive a payment. Mr. Ahearn said the company had not yet figured out how to structure those payments. The basic payment may be relatively small, but he said Reuters was likely to pay more to people offering exclusive rights to images of major events. For now, no money is changing hands between Yahoo and Reuters, but if Reuters is able to create a separate news service with the user-created material, it will split the revenue with Yahoo.

The main page of You Witness News effectively offers a mini-course in how to become a photojournalist or videographer: tips for shooting video from Yahoo reporter Kevin Sites and the BBC; links to resources like the Center for Citizen Media and the Institute for Interactive Journalism; guidelines for reporters, “including sourcing, disclosure of potential conflicts, and preparing for interviews.”