Brent Hurley from the Strategic Partnership Development Team at YouTube made an interesting revelation way back in May 2008 that every minute over 10 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube. That means by the time I take the elevator from ground floor to my flat in 5th floor, 10 hours of fresh video is loaded onto the google acquired video warehouse. Come December 2008, the number is growing strong and it wont be long before we see a big bang of viral videos in the online space.
It’s easy to make an ‘online’ video. Just about anyone with access to PC and net can do it. But making the video go truly ‘viral’ is not a mean feat. That being said it’s not a rocket science either to pull off a good viral video marketing campaign provided you hook yourself onto some golden rules.
Ask yourself why? - Just coming up with some online video and waiting for a miracle to happen is certainly not a good way to go. It’s important for you to know the purpose of the campaign. What is it exactly that you want to achieve. Let’s take the famous example of Nike: It’s viral campaign showed the famous football star Ronaldinho hitting the crossbar no less than four times, without the ball touching the floor. The main objective was to showcase its Nike R10 football boot and also establish a better brand connection. Viewers wondered if the clip was actually real or just computer generated. To solve this puzzle, millions of viewers became part of the campaign.
Be creative - Ofcourse as a small business owner you wouldn’t be able to afford Ronaldinho in your viral video. The good news is you don’t need a celebrity. Even a gorilla in place of celebrity works as long as you create a unique, entertaining and engaging video. You don’t believe me? Check out how Cadbury used a gorilla to win its customers hearts!
http://www.dailymotion.com/videoxa675p
Measure success – Don’t just assume that a gorilla will do the trick. Use the right tools to measure if your viral video campaign is indeed working out or not. Use TubeMogul or any other powerful analytics program to know who, what and how your videos are being viewed.
Keep it short and sweet - Think about it, the recall and viral power of a 2-3 minutes video is anyday better than an hour long video. Do the consumers even care to watch the entire video if its too long? The answer in most cases would be a big NO. If you really have a massive entertaining and engaging content, then break it down and release it in series. This way you will keep providing the viewers with entertaining videos regularly. The more they come back, the more are the chances of they helping you make your video go viral.
Use social media - Use social media sites like twitter, facebook, myspace etc so that the video spreads like wild fire. Ofcourse again the quality of the content decides whether the users of the social media site pass it on to friends, family and others. If the video is not compelling enough it is more likely to stay stale.
Its not just YouTube - Without a shadow of doubt YouTube is the big daddy of online video space but that doesn’t mean you don’t spread the wings of your video to other video sharing sites like dailymotion, veoh, metacafe etc. Remember at the end of the day the whole viral deal is reaching out to as many people as you can through the video.
Finally dont ignore the Metadata – Whats metadata you ask? Well let’s just say its the way google understands what your video is all about. The better you make Google understand, the better the traffic to your video gets. The right ‘tags’ i.e the words which tell what your video is all about, a clear title and description of the video and placing it in a relevant category are some of the ways of optimizing the metadata around your video.
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Hi, good post. I have been wondering about this issue,so thanks for posting.
Am glad that you found it interesting Andrew.. Cheers!