We all want to make a kick-ass viral video to promote our music, film, or product because it’s one of the fastest ways to get recognized today. Our main goal is to get lots of people to view our video so they would talk about its awesomeness (or ugliness) to their families, neighbors, friends, and even to their enemies. We want them to post the link of our video to their facebook, twitter, mypace, and all other social networking sites. We want them to feel that they’re COOL because they’ve seen our video and people should check it out too so they won’t be left out.
First, let’s define viral marketing. Viral marketing are buzzwords referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes. It can be delivered by word of mouth or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet.Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or text messages. [USA Today]
The goal of marketers interested in creating successful viral marketing programs is to create viral messages that appeal to individuals with high social networking potential (SNP) and that have a high probability of being presented and spread by these individuals and their competitors in their communications with others.
So how do you make a viral video? Is it really hit or miss or is there a secret formula? Well, I cannot tell for sure because there are videos which have the potential of going viral but just don’t go far and there are those videos made without effort or thought that become famous in a day. But I will enumerate some of the common qualities of a viral video.
Funny
Every person wants a good laugh especially if they’re stuck in the office with heaps of boring stuff to do. It makes them forget about the daily grind for just a few minutes and they would likely share the video so others would have a good laugh too. Crack them up and they’ll tell everyone about it! But, this is also one of the most difficult videos to make. Making someone explode in laughter is not very easy to do- you have to reach inside, tickle their bones until they let go and laugh. For me, making people laugh is three times as hard as scaring people. If you have a great concept or a good material, you’re lucky! Funny videos have a really big chance of getting viral.
Controversial
This is the kind of video that will make people talk and talk for hours. Pose a question, an issue, a puzzle, a trick, a scandal. It should be controversial enough so that people watching your video would say “ Woah!really?”, “That’s impossible!”, or “WTF is this real?”. Then they would repost it to their blogs and social networking sites to get people’s opinions. There are obvious dangers here, but depending on the product or service a long and detailed conversation can do a lot of the market education for you.
Bizarre
Do not just settle for “unique” and “unusual”, go for the bizarre if you want your video go viral. The bizarre, not necessarily the grotesque, reminds them of life outside of the cubicle. It’s a short escape. People would like to share it to others because they want others because it’s exciting, interesting, and out-of-this-world.
Your video should have that ‘urgency to share’ effect the moment it ended. It should be too funny, too shocking, too interesting, too cool that people who’ve seen it would want others to check out the video too (and right away!) so they would have something to talk about.
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