Influx

On Saturday at PopTech, Kent Nichols of Ask a Ninja, was the perfect speaker to follow Chris Anderson’s talk about the Long Tail.

Ask A Ninja is one of the most popular video blogs on the Internet and in the last few months has been growing its audience at an incredible rate.

Kent shared with the audience the AAN story and 3 simple rules that he and his creative partner use when developing their content.

1. Distribute without Judgment The web gives you the chance to experiment and learn. Production style has evolved over time from two cameras and little editing, to 100 edits in a 3 minute show.

2. Grow with your Audience Work with them, not top down. Put it out there and bubble up with your audience.

3. Content Follows Form- Collaborate and works with other people on your content like sketch comedians. The goal is to get people to refer their friends. That’s when it becomes viral. If people enjoy it, they will share it.

Kent also explained how big media brands play a powerful role in the success of the smaller players at the end of the Long Tail. He owed much of AANs success to iTunes who made AAN a recommended podcast, the result of that was to increase their subscribers from a few hundred to over 12,000.