What makes a video go viral?

Before diving into the question of "What makes a video viral?", we should first understand what a "viral video" actually means.  In a nutshell, it is a video that becomes popular through Internet sharing such as social media sites and email.  A video becomes viral after it receives many views or "hits" within a short period of time (usually within a week).  People will begin to share these videos with friends, family and groups and the hit count increases perpetually.  You may recognize some of the photos above with screen shots of videos that have gone viral, that have been viewed billions of times by people worldwide.

A personal favorite of mine is Charlie Bit My Finger. This one minute clip has nothing flashy, no promotions (originally) and caught a moment in time that billions of people can relate to, a child trying to play the role of a grown up, taking care of Charlie, only to discover that a little egging on leads to a moment of shock and pain.  A simple video...that has (officially) been viewed 500 million times!

This home video captured the hearts and laughs of people around the world.  Marketers and ad agencies would kill to have that kind of audience for their companies, and they are trying very hard to do just that.

With sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and more, sharing content online has never been easier.  Companies want to capture the viral video world, and are paying big bucks for it too.
So, what makes a video viral?

FIRST:

Make a plan.  Some people might think this is easy.  You make a humorous video that viewers love,  yada yada yada, they share the video on other sites and the video keeps getting shared until it becomes viral.   Hate to burst your bubble, but usually, people don't randomly wander upon a video gem.  If you want your video to go viral, you need to know how to work the system.  For beginners, look for trendy words on Google or another search engine site.  These words are a gold mine for marketing agencies.  They tell what the consumer wants and doesn't want.  I highly recommend using Google Analytics for your website to help you find out about your audience.  That leads in to my second part of plan making, target a specific audience.   Hoping your video will be liked by the general populace right off the bat is like trying to breathe through a straw...it's really hard!  Focus, focus, focus your video to a specific audience in the beginning.  This could be anybody.  A recent viral video that swept across social media sites and news sites did just that.  Watch the following video and guess who they were targeting.

You can probably guess that the audience this video targeted was thrill seeking, adventurous and daring young adults.  This video was posted online on April 11th, 2012 and 19 days later this video has been viewed 30 million times on YouTube.  Make a plan.  Target an audience.

Second:

Think outside of the box.  Now I must note beforehand that some viral videos just happen to be somebody with a camera being at the right place at the right time to capture something random and epic.  But if you are in the market of creating viral videos, it would be wise to have some creative juices flowing through that.

A master of promoting their product and making unique viral videos is the band "OK Go".  They help promote their songs and albums by creating music videos that are unique and flowing.  Take a look at a couple of their famous viral music videos.

 

"Here it Goes Again"

 

"This Too Shall Pass"

The rise of OK Go to stardom isn't attributed to their music, but because they were able to build up a large fan base through their music video campaigns.  Their creative touch and their emphasis on social media to spread their music around has helped their music videos become viral overnight.
Another creative approach for a viral video can be seen in the work of aspiring film maker Devin Graham.  His recent viral video "World's Largest Rope Swing" became an overnight sensation, with news companies like Yahoo News and the Huffington Post writing this about his video.  If you haven't seen this video, check it out.

Do you think Devin thought outside of the box?  You bet!  Remember, a little creativity can go a long way.

Third:

Once you have filmed your video, edited it, placed it online and focused in on an audience, it is time to go back to your video and ask "Why was this video a hit?" or "Why did this video fail?".  It's important to know that even though you may think you have made a video that has the potential to go viral, less then 4% of YouTube videos reach 100,000 views.  So, after the release of the project and after being online for a substantial amount of time, you should go back and review statistics and demographics from the video.  Was the video not as popular because of what?  Was it the music or images shown?  Maybe it wasn't marketed to the right audience.  From a business standpoint, you should carefully review your product that you were trying to promote or sell in the video and see how much of an impact it had.  I won't go into it here, but this page talks about 5 ways marketers fail with viral video campaigns. 

To end, probably one of the most successful viral video campaigns to promote a product is the Old Spice "Smell Like a Man...Man" campaign.  It incorporated creativity, focusing on one group, with a solid plan to make their content more interactive and friendly.  Old Spice body wash sales skyrocketed after this campaign.

Just like the successful viral videos you have seen here, you too can be part of the latest and greatest viral video.  With creativity, humor, storytelling and specific plans, you will be one step closer to creating viral videos.