5 Secrets to Creating Popular, Viral Marketing Videos
Today, getting a marketing video, or any video for that matter, to go viral is thought to be a sort of Holy Grail of Internet achievement. It’s usually a quick few days of exposure, though it has the potential to generate a lot of popularity, and open a lot of doorways in a short period of time.
Having just one viral video can garner the attention of major media outlets, like high ranking blogs, newspapers and even national television companies.
While there is some luck involved, the work that goes into creating a viral video is far more important and specific than most people think when they consider viral videos. Most believe that it’s just a matter of good fortune and being in the right place at the right time. While that’s true in part, planning and executing or releasing a video in order to boost the chances of it going viral is just as important in determining your success.
With that in mind, let’s look at five ways that you can increase the chances of striking online gold and having your marketing video go viral.
1. Have a Specific Marketing Strategy
Creating a viral video simply isn’t likely to happen by publishing on YouTube and then walking away from the computer, hoping to come back to 80,000 views in a few hours. While that can occur in certain situations depending on the names involved in the production, it’s not the norm and it’s not how content marketing works.
For your video, you need to have a marketing strategy and plan in place before you publish your video online. That plan should include a social media strategy, contact information for niche blogs and emails ready to go out to those who might be interested in your video.
Having that in place ahead of time will significantly increase your videos shelf life.
2. Engage the Proper Emotions
Interest, excitement, awe, shock, humor; all these emotions are ways in which you can use a video to connect with people. If one or more of these emotions are present, it also makes your video far more likely to be shared.
When writing your script and planning the video itself, understand how you intend to connect with your audience and what emotion(s) you want to count on to encourage sharing. For example, the “Girl Learns to Dance in a Year” video capitalizes on inspiration and draws people in that way. Your video needs to hone in on an emotion in a similar manner.
3. Avoid Overusing Emotion
Emotion is good, but it is possible to have too much of a good thing. Your video, should engage on an emotional level in a somewhat subtle manner. While you want to connect with people, you also want to avoid scaring them off by making your emotional pitch too obvious.
4. Watch Your Tone
At some point, you’ve got to get people from the video’s story to the product or service you’re marketing. It’s a difficult line to walk, because moving from emotion to a sales pitch can completely throw off the tone of the video. Thus, the transition to your company’s logo or product pitch, whatever it may be, needs to be as natural and seamless as possible.
5. A Comprehensive Platform Approach
Breaking your video should involve a comprehensive approach and a number of platforms.
In all likelihood, the first place you’ll go for exposure will be YouTube. After that, your most active social media accounts, and social sharing sites like Reddit, StumbleUpon and Pinterest should all be on the docket. Any additional exposure you can get via email or contacts you might have should also be utilized.
Don’t Worry about the “Viral” Buzzword
Keep in mind, there’s only one real secret to getting a video to go viral. You need to create a viral-worthy video.
What’s happening is very simple. A video that people find worth watching, will share it with others who will do the same. There’s no magic formula to make that happen. So as best you can, avoiding worrying too much about the “viral” label. It’s just a buzzword.
Instead, focus on making your video worth watching and sharing. If you can do that and get the marketing basics down, you’ve done all you can do.
About the author:
Camille McClane is a tech and social media enthusiast with a passion for writing. She lives in Southern California with her son and enjoys reading all of the fabulous content on Powtoon.com. She is honored to be among such great contributors!
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