What is a viral video?
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
How do you create a viral video?
So you want to make a viral video on YOUTUBE…Doesn’t everybody? So what’s the magic formula?
Everyday parents are filming their kids, their pets, themselves trying to come up with that little gem, that little clip that when you post-it to Facebook, or Twitter or YOUTUBE it just takes off with a life of it’s own.
Twins Gangnam Style Viral Video
For one it’s uniqueness, two little Asian boys that appear to be about 2 years old dancing in sync to, surprise, surprise…another viral video.
Secondly, this video is extremely relevant. What do I mean? Well Gangnam style has swept the nation by storm, so anything that is unique, funny, and especially entertaining related to Gangnam style is going to garner some attention, couple that with it being Asian kids mimicking a dance video produced by a Korean music artist and you have a pretty good formula for success.
With the explosion of Social Media, the big ones of course being Facebook and Twitter its easy to see how a video that is most importantly, entertaining could go viral. Little kids always seem to be a winner:
Charlie bit my finger-again! Has over 500,000,000, yes you read that right, that is over 500 Million views of this viral video.
Is it me or is there something a little sadistic about his parents doing this again? I mean Charlie really does bite him, and it does look like it really hurts. Isn’t that a little twisted?
Anyways, I got off subject.
YOUTUBE is a place that levels the playing field. It’s a worldwide portal. YOU can make a video in the privacy of your own home, car, workplace, etc… throw it up on YOUTUBE, post it in your Facebook page, Tweet to your followers and sit back and watch the hits just start rolling in.
Well, it’s not quite that easy. There are some keys as to what has potential for viral video success:
- You have to have a Title that grabs Attention-people are searching for entertainment, so make it enticing for them to want to click on your video
- You have to have a screen shot that grabs attention-again, people are looking for entertainment, let them know they will be entertained
- Personalize it-Look into the camera, talk into the camera, talk to your potential audience
- Ad lib it- If it sounds scripted or looks like your reading something people will be turned off
- Mimicry is the highest form of flattery, it doesn’t need to be original, just entertaining, see:Asian boys dancing to Gangnam Style
- Don’t edit the audio, if it sounds produced it loses some credibility with your audience
- Keep it short, 2-3 minutes maximum, we live in a sound-bite society, even the most entertaining video will start to lose people after about 3 minutes.
- Promote it. Put it up on you YOUTUBE, Facebook, Twitter, etc… Make sure you have some unique tags for it. Let everyone know about it and ask them to share it
- When placing it on YOUTUBE, make sure you set it to public view. YOUTUBE restricts the amount of views that a private video can have.
- Hope for the best. Their is no guarantees. There are millions of highly entertaining videos on YOUTUBE that have not gone viral. Sometimes there is no rhyme or reason to it.