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Have you seen that Chuck Norris teamed up with presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee for a great political video ad campaign?

Sadly, it was news to me yesterday.

But after a little Googling, I found few news outlets outside the Washington Post wrote much about the Huckabee-Norris video ad.

In case you missed it, the video is below. It’s a play on “Chuck Norris facts,” which was/is a pretty well-read Internet meme (Definition of meme: An object of interest on the Internet that self-propagates in a viral manner.).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjYv2YW6azE&feature=user[/youtube]

(btw, I don’t endorse Huckabee or any presidential candidates.)

By embedding the video inside the blog post, the WaPo increased the likelihood that their story would be circulated and more users would come to the post to watch the video and read the story. They are increasing their readership!

Although the Norris meme is a little old, it still has some power, judging by the video’s more than 1,000 diggs.

So how can the Chuck Norris factor help news orgs?

Meme participation can bring more users to your stories. Time-wasting web users who may never have thought to look the Post for Chuck Norris stories may have been lucky enough to StumbleUpon WaPo’s story and found they like the Post’s blog and continued reading it. The Post might have actually gained new readers because they recognized a web trend and capitalized on it.

Why do I believe this? Because the WaPo post, which was published in November, still got comments well into late December.

Advice for 2008

@News Orgs: Start paying attention. The web matters. More Americans are using it. More people waste time at work watching YouTube videos, mocking up LOLcats and sending links to one another.

When you see something that fits a web trend, send it to the appropriate reporter and get up a story, link to outside sites and embed others’ videos. Participate. Then promote your stories on social bookmarking sites.

You can even print these stories in the paper or show them on the TV newscast.

Then encourage your audiences to participate in the conversation. They’ll know that your news org is on top of the latest trends. They’ll know to look to you and they won’t be left out of the loop.