Viral Video Production
September 30th, 2011 in Video Production, Viral Posted by cathy
Viral for Association of Town Centre Management
Viral isn’t a style of video in itself – if a video is shared enough times then it will appear on the viral charts, but it can be any style.
It’s really hard to predict what will go viral. There’s a huge appetite for user generated cat videos, epic fails etc. but if you want to include a sales message and not look amateur, then this doesn’t fit. A fake video that ‘pretends’ to be home made and then reveals a sales message does not have the desired response. The viewer feels duped at the end and so associates a negative feeling with your brand.
In viral video production the creative obviously helps – ie. funny, unusual, creative, technically impressive, etc… It needs to be something of a talking point – something you would want to share with your friends but even so, there are so many people doing the same thing it’s hard to get seen. So once you’ve made your viral video, you need to promote it/seed it.
Ideally you would employ a company to provide a seeding campaign. They will distribute video content across the internet targeting on Facebook and Twitter Apps, and Sites/Blogs, and publisher partners and use networks of social influencers to drive homepage placements for videos on Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon. Of course, this service doesn’t come free but if you really want a video to go viral then it makes sense to reserve some budget to help achieve this goal.
There are some things you can do yourself:
• Upload your viral video YouTube making sure you add tags so that your video can be found on Google.
• Consider paying for a promoted video on YouTube. It works in a similar way to Google ads, it helps your get seen along side the search results.
• Share your viral video on Twitter and get friends and family to pass it around
• Direct message influential bloggers on Twitter and ask them to retweet into their circle of followers
• Share your viral video on Facebook and Linked In.
• Consider creating a series of viral videos. Then you can have a dedicated Facebook page which encourages people to talk about your brand.
And finally – keep going!! Keep sharing it wherever you can and talking about it when and wherever possible to get your video seen.