Mary Bernklau's List: Viral Videos

• Definition:

    Briefly, a viral video is any footage, long or short, that becomes popular via social networking and Internet sharing. Viral videos can either be manufactured to become viral, although most viral videos become big unintentionally, and are simply so funny, shocking, or unexpected that they are prime material for sharing and forwarding. 

• “How many views do you need to be viral?”  He says, “A few years ago, a video could be considered “viral” if it hit a million views.”  But Nalts is updating that definition.  He says, “A video, I submit, is “viral” if it gets more than 5 million views in a 3-7 day period.” 
• he videos that pull in one million views and then level off aren’t the videos that are remembered.  It’s the videos that accrued 5 million, 6 million or 20 million within a couple of weeks that we remember—the video of Baby Emerson, scared of his mom’s nose, that has been viewed over 17.2 million times since March 2011; the original Double Rainbow video; and Charlie Schmidt’s Keyboard Cat.  These are the big sharks—the videos that draw in millions in a short time and just keep on growing—these are the videos that come to mind when we think of the term “viral video”.

• Of course, views aren’t the only things that determine whether or not a video is “viral”.  There’s got to be a lot of buzz around the video aswell.  Viral videos are the talk of the town—garnering coverage on popular blogs, rising to the top of sites like Reddit, being Tweeted and posted to Facebook, and even covered on the evening news.

   

  Nalts writes, “Part of what makes a video “viral” is not just the views but the degree of discussion online and offline (media).  Here we get into a “chicken and the egg” issue, since the video’s viral nature may prompt “coverage”, which inspires even more views.”
• There’s an old saying that imitation is the best form of flattery.  Imitation is also one of the best measures of whether or not a video has gone viral.  When people remix, re-cut, copy, auto-tune and re-create your video you know that it’s a hit.  Check out the following posts that roundup the best parodies of some of the most viral videos out there:
• ongevity is another great sign of a viral video.  What do I mean by longevity?  Basically, that the video is remembered for a long time to come.  Some videos fade out as time passes and we forget about them just as quickly as they went viral.

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• Now that we know what going viral means let’s talk about some tips for going viral.  First of all there is no best practice that you can follow to go viral.  As Seth and I discussed on Sunday, if every dancing baby video went viral then it would quickly go out of style and no longer be funny.  So with that let’s talk about some tips.  Keep in mind that there are exceptions to every one of these rules.

   
   
  • Unique – This is an absolutely critical element.  It doesn’t mean that you have to be the first person to have an idea, but you need to do something very unique and compelling with it.
   
  • Humor – There are exceptions to the rule on this one like educational or horror, but hands down everyone loves a good laugh.  Humor is one of the biggest pulls to help a video go viral.
   
  • Timely & Relevant – This always helps.  If a major event is going on and you can piggyback off that momentum then all the better.  An example of this could be a new movie, major news, upcoming sporting event, etc.  You could also put an interesting spin on something timeless that everyone remembers.  For example, 9/11 and Katrina might not be funny but you can guarantee people still remember and care about the subject.
   
  • Keyword Buzz – This kind of goes down the SEO path and the last tip, but if you can mix a specific keyword around something that everyone wants to know about then you can easily get a lot of viral credit.  For example a few years ago I shot a talking head review of my Blackberry Storm when it came out.  Who would have thought that an article on PC World would have picked up the video?  Today it’s almost a given if you include iPad in your subject you will get some uptick in interest.
   
  • Controversy – There are few things that people want to share more than something that is controversial.  Not only do they want to share it, but they want to comment and talk about it.  Be careful who you might offend, but if you can make a compelling argument this is a big winner.
   
  • Copycat on Success – I mentioned earlier that a hundred dancing baby videos just aren’t funny, but a couple of good imitations can go a long way.  The perfect example is the success of the recent Old Spice commercials.  Here are three of my favorite copy cats.  You might notice that the first two are higher education related.
   
  • Promote through Thought Leaders – If you have a good idea there is no better place to start than the content sharing hubs.  For example HubSpot has shot a lot of videos recently to strike the viral gold, but the first in the Foursquare Cops series by far came the closest.  With almost 40K views I consider that a success!  We had a nice buzz keyword and promoted the video directly to Foursquare and Mashable who both wrote blog articles sharing the video.  An instant viral success if you can get a few big hubs to share your content.  Know your thought leaders.
   
  • It’s a Numbers Game – Let’s be realistic.  Not every video you create will go viral.  You have to be prepared to fail ten times to strike gold in this arena.  Realistically you are more likely to win the lottery than have a video reach a million views on the web.

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thumbnail" title="" style="position: relative; left: -12px; top: 0px;"> </a><br/> </figure><br/> <figcaption class="mainCaption" style="width: 214px; bottom: -100px;"><br/> Sites like YouTube have fuelled the rise of viral videos. </figcaption><br/><br/> </div><br/> &lt;!-- google_ad_section_start() --><br/> <p class="intro" id="intelliTxt" data-module="article-intro">A viral video is an Internet video clip that becomes popular not through centralized <a rel="nofollow" id="itxthook0" class="itxtnewhook itxthook" rel="nofollow" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; border: 0px none transparent; padding: 0px; background-color: transparent; background-image: none; display: inline;" href="#"><span class="itxtrst itxtrstspan itxtnowrap" id="itxthook0p"><span class="itxtrst itxtrstspan itxtnowrap itxtnewhookspan" id="itxthook0w" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 100%; text-decoration: underline ! important; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-style: none none solid; border-color: transparent transparent rgb(0, 204, 0); padding: 0px 0px 1px ! important; color: rgb(0, 153, 0); background-color: transparent;">publicity</span><img id="itxthook0icon" class="itxtrst itxtrstimg itxthookicon" src="http://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png" style="padding-top:0px!important;padding-right:0px!important;padding-bottom:0px!important;padding-left:4px!important;margin-top:0px!important;margin-right:0px!important;margin-bottom:0px!important;margin-left:0px!important;vertical-align:baseline!important"></span></a> (like a blockbuster movie) but through sharing between users. Viral videos may be created completely unintentionally or may be deliberately created in the hopes of garnering publicity for an endeavour, cause or product. It is the viral spread rather than the makers' intent that makes a video viral. <br/> <br/><br/></p></article></div></section>