Viral Video Tips

Online Video Viewing Continues To Rocket! Total Online Streams Up 41% From Last Year.
The Nielsen Company reported in August 2009 that year-over-year, unique viewers, total streams, streams per viewer and time per viewer increased by 41 percent in total streams.

Yes!  It’s true, video is red hot and getting hotter every day.  To take advantage of the channel, I recommend a good healthy dose of viral video.  The upside is huge, and the costs can certainly be contained when needed.  To make video viral work there are some necessary ingredients to achieve success. Here are a few tips:
Strike A Chord!
It’s important to evoke some emotion in the viewer. In most cases the stronger the better. You want viewers to feel:

• Love or hate
• Happy or angry
• Ignorant or empowered
• Excited or repulsed

What I’m saying here is, in order to make an impression and get viewers to go viral with your video, you need to get them feeling extreme - to the left or the right, and keep them away from feeling neutral.

Do The Unexpected
I remember seeing a hunting commercial promoting a pheromone spray as way to attract deer.  To prove the effectiveness a spokesperson was sprayed with the attractant.  He walked toward a deer that, instead of running away, stood up on it’s hind legs and began to beat the guy with it’s hooves.  The reaction was unexpected and unforgettable.

Be Clever
Sure we are usually advertising something when attempting to leverage viral video, but don’t simply make a commercial.  As in the deer pheromone video example, the push was the promotion of the spray.  Although the video was a commercial for the spray, it was presented in a clever way that had some shock value.  A simple straight forward video commercial will get no where…fast.

Never Waste Momentum
Once you have success, take advantage of it.  Produce more videos that build off the first one.  Post them and ride the viral wave as long as you can!

Facilitate Sharing
Sharing is what powers viral. Make sure that you enable viewers to:

• Download the video content in a usable format
• Embed the content on other sites
• Send it to friends
• Easily publish it on various social network websites
• Easily add it to bookmarking sites

When Possible Enable Commenting
If the video content does its job, people will be “feeling it”, and want to respond.  This is an important part of viral as it gets viewers to really think about what they saw to the point where they contribute content. It’s a wonderful thing when viewers create content for you.  It’s important to consider commenting back as that keeps the thread alive, which will attract more attention.

No Roadblocks!
Don’t hinder viral.  If it’s going to work, it must be free to take on a life of its own. Here are a couple obvious rules:

• Don’t restrict access
• Don’t require registration to view
• Avoid software or plugin downloads to view

Be The Most Viewed On YouTube
One of the key strategies for YouTube is to leverage the power of its traffic.  Approximately 1 billion videos are viewed each day on YouTube.  It’s an incredible number, yet it can feel a bit too big in terms of your video being found.  But, there is a way.  If you can generate 100,000 views or more, it’s possible to get into the rotation on the home page in the ‘Most Popular” section.

To get the views needed try these tactics:

• Blogs: When possible get popular related blogs to embed your video.
• Forums: Create multiple accounts in key user forums and begin conversations between the fictitious accounts.  Make sure to embed the video or at least provide links to view it.  Do this on as many forums as possible.
• MySpace: Create an account and embed the YouTube video in the comments section of other users that allow this to happen.
• Facebook: Use branded pages to share the video with fans.
• Email lists: Send the video to your subscriber email lists.

These tips should be helpful and work to get your viral video efforts off the ground.