For the second half of the event we had Darren D (ex Rubber and now editor of AdNews) along to talk about the brand new spanking AdNews Viral Chart - that’s proudly powered by VAN. After Darren, Andrew from Garage Sale Trail did his bit talking about their awesomely viral community project.

Thanks hugely to Genevieve and Kate from the APG who we co-hosted the event with, and who organised everything. For those who couldn’t make it down under, check out a snapshot of the memes shown below:

Australian Nyan Cat

Art of flight

Sexy Sax Man

Here’s a quick round-up of the best videos shown:

Snapdragon

Bad Lip Reading

NYC Bike protest

For more fun and games, and links to the next #KittenCamp keep in touch via Facebook or our Tumblr.

You can watch the outcome here on BBC Technology . . .

In other #KittenCamp news, this September’s event was pretty darn awesome as usual. Along with the usual meme-battle, featuring a selection of the best memes from the last month (which I won – again!), we had guest speaker Jack Arbuthnott from Scott Free Films (part of Ridley Scott’s empire) to talk about Life in a Day – the YouTube feature film.

Jack gave some brilliant insight into the making of the film, that involved over 80,000 YouTubers around the world uploading 1000′s of hours of video documenting a day in their life, all of which was then edited together under the guidance of Director Kevin McDonald into a hugely compelling and engaging feature film. You can check out the trailer for the film below, and see the film on the BBC at the end of October:

Also, if you missed this month’s #KittenCamp, here’s a taster of some of the videos we showed:

Chuck Testa Taxidermy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJP1DphOWPs

Jedi Kittens: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z3r9X8OahA

Indomitable Bus Driver: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkTw7J-hGmg

Michael and Sven: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEPvSo8bE2I

To get a ticket for either the next London or Bristol #KittenCamps, check out #KittenCamp’s online HQ.

Up first we had our bombastic *meme-battle* between Meme-Master-Meow (me) and the LOL Puppy (aka Baz Pilling). I’m pleased to say that I humiliated the LOL Puppy with a 4-3 win (having been 3-0 down after the first three rounds) and retain the Standing Cat Cup for yet another month.

After the chaos of our Meme-battle, came the genius (and mild insanity) of our special guests. Joel Veitch of Rathergood and dancing badger fame was our fist guest speaker – giving us a brief history of his meme-awesomeness. Joel’s been a stalwart of the UK meme-scene for the last 10 years or so, so it was v.interesting to get insights into his work – and to see how he made a rocket from bacon.

Jakob from Mother was up next, giving us some super-interesting insights into their Ikea Cats ad from last year, followed by Kate from Work Club who did an equally insightful talk about their *Human API* campaign for Ballantines.

As always the evening was finished off with a masterful meme-master-mix from @DJStoney.  Huge thanks to everyone for coming along and LOL-ing, and also thanks to the BBC who came along to film the event for an upcoming #KittenCamp special film

[obligatory cheezy BBC interview photo with the lovely @LJRich]

And, to wrap things up, here’s a quick selection of the best memes of the night [led by the most awesome *Buttery Biscuit Bass* from Swede Mason]

- Medal of Honour Cat (Freddie Wong at his best)  http://youtu.be/PXRX47L_3yE

- Hackgate the Movie http://youtu.be/wFufrqhp0eE

- Clark Retirement Community Lip dub http://youtu.be/uZ7-n930zJo

- Nyan Cat Smooth Jazz Cover http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaEmCFiNqP0

Not hugely obvious, but check this plethora of Star Trek related squirrel memery . . .

*Squirrel vs  Star Trek Communicator*

Star Trek Communicator (original)

*NUTZ version*

*Squirrels fighting Star Trek style*

London’s event on Monday saw *Meme-Master-Meow* go head-to-head with the *LOL Puppy*, for the UK’s first ever *meme battle*.  Special guest slots from the team behind the Real Farmville, Sneaky Zebra and Urgent Genius added a little spice, and the event closed with the first ever UK live meme-DJ-set from *@DJStoney*.

The #Kittencamp tour bus then moved onto Bristol, where *Meme-Master-Meow* took on *ROFL Rex* in a meme-battle to match all meme-battles.  The battle was taken to extra-time, where *ROFL Rex* won with a couple of sneaky last minute slam-dunking ROFLs.

Huge thanks for everyone who took part in both + if you haven’t already, keep in touch via our #KittenCamp Facebook page.

• Active seeding: this is the classic *video linking* and sharing with other blogs, to make sure your video is seen in as many places as possible.  You can do this manually, or automatically using a seeding service like the Viral Ad Network.
• Passive seeding: by this I mean *YouTube SEO* – i.e. optimising your video, so that it is more likely to be found.  YouTube optimisation is a fairly easy thing to do, however people are often pretty lazy when it comes to setting up their YouTube clip and forget that getting it right is the difference between your video going viral and getting lost in the YouTube jungle.

Me and my colleagues at the Viral Ad Network have put together 8 key tips on how best to optimise / set-up your video, which are in the slideshare below.  We also wrote an extended version of this in video SEO blog post.

Back in the 90s, search engine results were normally full of spam results. People who can’t remember the internet before Google often forget quite what I mean – These days you might still get one or two spam results, but back in the 90s it wasn’t uncommon for me to scroll through several pages of search results before I got to one that wasn’t spam.

When YouTube first launched, it’s search results could be spammed in fairly much the same way – leading to loads of companies giving “black hat” (i.e. spammy) advice on how to gain views on YouTube.
In the years since YouTube was bought by Google, they have put a lot of effort into avoiding this kind of spam – and just like traditional SEO, if you game the system too much your video is likely to be penalised.
For web spammers (who can easily create thousands of spam web sites) this is a hinderance – but if you are a reputable company with an expensive production cost to your videos then pushing the boundaries too much can seriously cost your campaign.
What counts as “spam”?
This is a tough one – but generally the idea is that someone watching a video should be counted as valid if the user has chosen to watch it.  That makes all of the following questionable practices:

• Auto-playing videos You can auto-play videos, and there are valid reasons you might want to. The user hasn’t chosen to watch the video though – so don’t expect the views to count on youtube.
• Sending people to a video page without telling them.  If somebody gets clicks on a link without knowing they’re going to see your video then they haven’t chosen to watch it. Don’t be surprised if these views get flagged as questionable by their anti-spam team, and your viewcount gets “stuck”.  This effect can be seen with viewers coming from services like StumbleUpon – people regularly notice that up to half the viewers from services like this don’t convert to views on YouTube. This is a result of the viewers not being engaged with the content – they didn’t choose to go to that specific video, so why should they count as views unless they stick around to watch most of the video?
• Using misleading tags / descriptions. If somebody thinks your video is about something other than what it is, then they haven’t really chosen to watch it. Don’t be surprised if you get penalised for using misleading descriptions.

(2) Make a great video

It goes without saying – but the better your video, the more people will be interested in it.
No matter how YouTube and Google change their sites or search algorithms – they are always going to try to show the videos they think people will be most interested in. If your video is one of them, then you have a massive bonus over other videos.
This should automatically carry over to increased numbers of “likes”, comments, favorites and subscriptions – all of which are potentially telling signs of how good a video is when YouTube decide which videos to feature higher in their results.
(3) Enable Embedding

If you disable embedding on your video then you’re blocking our a large segment of potential traffic straight away.
embedding isn’t just used for bloggers want to post your video on their blog – it’s also used by large social sites when their users share your content using a technology called “oEmbed”.
For example, when somebody posts a link to a YouTube video on facebook or twitter – the video is embedded on facebook/twitter itself, so the user never has to visit YouTube to watch it.
Of course, if you disable embedding then the video can’t be shown – your video won’t be embedded on facebook or twitter, and the user needs one more click before they can watch your video.

(4) Pick a great Title

Pick a title that’s concise, descriptive and engaging.
(5) Pick a great screenshot

Pick a screenshot that will get people clicking.  Make sure its engaging.  Make sure it works with the title.
(6) Upload subtitles (closed captions)

Uploading closed captions does more than allow deaf viewers to appreciate your video (Although that alone should be enough reason to add them) – it also allows Search engines (and YouTube) to understand the video and find out what it’s really about.
The better they know what it’s about, the more confident they can be about if viewers are going to be interested in it – and that’s what will fuel good placements on YouTube.

(7) Encourage people to interact

There are special sections on YouTube for: * Most Viewed * Most discussed * Most Liked * Most subscribed * Top Favorited
The higher you get in each category, the more extra views you will get from the exposure. If you encourage your viewers to comment, like, favorite, or subscribe then you’ve got a better chance of climbing those lists.

(8) Kick-start your campaign the right way

If you are planning to kick-start your campaign with a bought media spend then quality is really important.
When YouTube sees a large number of users watching your video, they can use feedback from those users to work out how interesting other users will find your video.
Only YouTube really know what kind of feedback they use – but some examples that they may use are how many viewers stop watching your video a few seconds into it – how many people leave the youtube watch page as soon as they have arrived, the ratio of likes to dilikes, and how positive the comments are.
If that automated feedback is good then your video is likely to be shown to more users in search results and across the site.
To have a better chance of getting good feedback, try to place the video so that people watching it know what to expect – rather than trying to get every man and their dog to watch the video – which might reduce the quality of their feedback.

Of course our suggestion would be to kick off your campaign with paid for seeding from the Viral Ad Network

Coincidentally, at the same the dog seems to be giving the cat a run for its money as *king of the memes*.  Here’s my favorite latest doggy delight . . .