Monday, November 28, 2011

How To Create A Viral Video

Going Viral image from Bobby Owsinski's Music 3.0 blog
We'd all love for our video to go viral and get millions of views overnight. That's the dream, but it happens pretty rarely, although it's more likely to happen if you have an adorable cat or baby video, or for the guys, a video worthy of Jackass. RealSEO recently posted an article about How To Run A Successful Online Video Contest, and in it were some pretty good advice about creating a viral campaign.

"Not to be confused with the contest video, viral videos are entertaining content pieces designed to be spread virally throughout the web and should not blatantly promote the contest. From our experience, the following rules will help:
  • Create Content, Not Ads – Try to refrain from creating a blatant ad for your contest and focus on creating a piece of content that entertains. It is ok to promote your contest somewhere, but do it subtly and organically (as if it is part of the story).
  • Provoke a response – Humans are social beings and we naturally like to share positive experiences like laughter or happiness with our friends. Draw an emotional response from your viewer such as shock or laughter and they will naturally want to share it with their friends.
  • Remove sharing barriers – Consider the points before (under premise) on shareable content. What does sharing your video say about the individual? Does this align with what they want to be saying about themselves?
  • Seed your content – Before it can go viral, you need initial viewers. Identify influencers in your industry and get it in front of them, or use a viral seeding company such as Sharethrough or Unruly Media to do it for you. These services usually charge a per view fee so it’s measurable and effective.
There are tons of resources on creating ‘Social Videos’, for the latest best practices and information check out http://www.reelseo.com/video/social/
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