The moment you have any success with anything, you can quickly become the go-to person on that topic. I’ve been asked a couple times to help create a viral video and how I had done it before. Being asked to create a viral video is always a funny thing to be asked because you really can’t call it a viral video until it goes viral. And what really makes a successful viral video? Is it people sharing, the sales from the video, number of views, or the recognition? For me personally, it’s the recognition or talk value that really defines a successful video. I’ve been told by many people how much they loved the Money Money Money music video. That tells me that one, they watched it and two, since they are telling me that they liked it that means they likely shared it with friends as well. I wish I could say there was some sort of secret formula and I had that magic to share but really there are only good strategies and practices. In the end it’s keeping your fingers crossed and hope for the best. With that said I wanted to share some thoughts on how we were able to get over 200,000 views on the Money Money Money video in only a few months.
First and foremost, the number one driving force behind every viral video is having a good idea or concept. I’m sorry but just uploading the same commercial you put out for TV doesn’t make for an online viral video. There is 35 hours of content uploaded every minute to youtube and most of that has under 500 views. The likelihood of catching the attention of the web audience is small.
After someone watches your video you want them to say to themselves I have to share this with my friends. What makes a video sharable? Simply think about what you like to have forwarded on to you and what you like to forward onto others. There is either a wow, that’s the coolest thing I’ve seen or I can’t stop laughing after seeing this. I’m a big fan of the wow that’s funny kind of videos. Humor is always sharable, so funny videos have proven to be very popular and have been the genesis of multiple cross-media promotions. If a video makes you say, "Wow!" it has potential to go viral. But if a person isn’t getting some visceral response from it, chances are they won't ask their friends to see it.
So you have a video that you think is great and ready to share but you should think about when and where you share it first. There are a lot of factors to take into account when you decide to upload and release your video for the first time. Don’t launch your video on a Friday night, the audience is going to be small mot people are not checking Twitter and Facebook at this time. You really are not going to gain traction till Monday when most people are online checking to see what happened over the weekend. This isn’t a tested day; I’ve only had one video go viral but we launched the Money Money Money video on Wednesday in the early afternoon. Launching a video on a Wednesday or Thursday is the perfect time. Most people are looking for something to help lift their spirits till the weekend. If your video can do that they are going to want to share that joy with friends. Where to launch is almost as important as the when. Most people will tell you to get the video distributed on every video site and platform you can. But knowing how your audience watches is also important. I knew that Vimeo had become the place every motion graphics artist is posting their work. They are active on the site, trust the content from Vimeo to be quality and as a result are most likely to watch a Vimeo link in twitter then a YouTube link. So first I posted the video onto Vimeo and Facebook and then the next day or so I began to post it on other sites including YouTube and MySpace. Rather then dumping the video and over saturating the web I was able to make the Vimeo version of the video the most active and shared version. Depending on your audience though YouTube or Facebook might be a better launching site for your video.
If I’m given the option to create and promote another video I would go about it the same way. I hope I was able to help guide you in the right direction but there is no easy answer for the question. Just be sure that you make quality work and hopefully the rest will fall in line.
