blogtcs.com

The Catholic Sun is on YouTube.

You may have noticed that The Catholic Sun is trying to do more with video. When we meet as an editorial team, we ask ourselves “Which of these stories would make for good video?” Oftentimes there’s a lot of stories, but we just don’t have the time and training to pull together videos for every story. We’re primarily a print publication, so video is a “side” to the newspaper, not the “main course.” Video is maybe even a condiment. Think mustard, not fries.

Anyway, so I was taking a look at some of the statistics on our YouTube channel — what age group watches us (45-54 year olds are leading right now), what  our most popular videos are (Bishop-elect Wall during a World Youth Day send-off Mass, clocking in at more than 3,000 views) — you know, that kind of thing. And then I checked out some of our more popular days for views.

And there was Feb. 5 — sticking out like a tuxedoed man in the desert. I wondered why. Well, it didn’t take too long to figure it out. Feb. 5 was the day we found out that our vicar for priests, Fr. Wall, would become the bishop of Gallup, NM (his mother is featured in a recent video, by the way). That was huge news. But it didn’t really explain why we had so many views on our YouTube channel.

Well, that same day, Catholic blogger Rocco Palmo featured Ambria Hammel’s video of Bishop-elect Wall — you know, the most popular video on our channel — on his “Whispers in the Loggia” blog. Just like that, this short, simple video became our number one. It might have been seen fewer than 200 times before that day.

So, now we’re promoting our videos on Twitter and through e-mails to people involved in the events, but I guess the real trick to getting more views is getting on “Whispers.” Maybe it’ll take another one of our fine priests being named bishop of a diocese. (Guesses as to who’s next anyone? We should be sure to have a video for Palmo to blog about.)

If you spend much time on YouTube — and I can’t say that I do, really — you’ll see some videos get hundreds of thousands of views. Some videos are seen millions of times. I keep waiting for our breakout video, or even one that tops 10,000 views. (We’ve got something like 260,000 readers. Topping 10,000 isn’t crazy, is it?)

Until then, we’ll have to rely on the help of other journalists, bloggers and our readers. Please spread the word.

~JD