WHAT IS A VIRAL VIDEO?
Viral videos are video clips that gain widespread popularity through the process of Internet sharing, typically through email or Instant messaging, blogs and other media sharing websites.
A viral video is something a bit special. It could be controversial, laugh out loud funny or so unique that you feel compelled to forward it on to your friends, colleagues and family. It is this compulsion that makes a video a viral. Any other video is not a viral.
WHAT ELEMENTS SHOULD A VIDEO HAVE?
A viral video should be short. It should get the message across in about 30 seconds (unless there is a specific reason for this not to happen), and it should not look over produced. Virals are popular when they look raw and leave the viewer questioning whether it is real. The story within the video must contain the all important and killer 'seeding hook' - an angle in the video that is unexpected. This is the extremely funny punchline or the incredibly shocking ending, or the amazing unexpected twist. It is this that compells people to watch and forward it on in masses.
You may be surprised to know that many viral video producers fall down by trying to please their clients too much - which in turn over complicates the message - trying to cram in everything. Viral videos should be made with the audience in mind and ONLY the audience.
HOW TO MAKE A VIDEO GO VIRAL
You can lead a horse to water, but you cant make it drink. Merely posting a video on youtube and other video fileshare sites wont make a video go viral. Hundreds of thousands of videos are uploaded to Youtube IN A DAY! So thats potentially millions of video clips across all fileshare platforms on a daily basis. Your video will literally be a needle in a haystack.
What can be done? A viral video seeding strategy is needed to help it along. There are many companies that specialise in seeding alone, but you need quite a big budget for this. The benefits are that you could have a global campaign, with analytics - tracking all sorts of information, from the age of the viewer, how long they watched, where they are based etc.
If you dont have a budget for a seeding company, then there are a number of things that you can do to get your video noticed amongst the billions of clips out there today:
1) produce a raw natural looking 30 second video with a killer seeding hook! This is pretty hard to do. The concept is the key, the viewer is the King!
2) upload it to all the best fileshare sites. There are in reality only about 20 core video fileshare sites. The rest pull videos from these sites to their own sites (clone sites)
3) write an article about it and syndicate that article to article sites and social bookmarking sites like Digg (make sure the article contains a link to the video)
4) Get it noticed by national newspapers, local press and online news resources that are popular. If it gets picked up by these you are well on your way - the traffic this will drive to your video will be unbelievable.
5) Post on Facebook, Myspace, and all other cool social networking sites
6) Email it to all your friends, colleagues and family and ask them to forward it on
HOW LONG CAN IT TAKE?
How long is a piece of string. Where some videos immediately go viral, other take quite a while to be noticed. However popularity breeds popularity - so if your video appears as a "most viewed" or "most popular" video, its destined to get an additional huge push in traffic again just from being highlighted in this way. In similar vain, if your video is picked up by the press, you can expect high traffic push in viewing.
I WANT A VIRAL - WHAT DO I DO NOW?
Get in touch with us. Let us know what you want to achieve and we'll provide you with a creative concept with the viewer at the heart.
We dont charge the earth for our services. We love what we do, and you'll love working with us!
Ossian Viral Video Production
www.ossian.tv
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