I’m big fan of the viral video. I’ve seen David scream after the dentist, watch Chris Crocker cry over Britney, and listened to a four year old “read” a book on kittens. These videos became a viral success on their own because they were so funny that people wanted to forward them on and wanted to be the first to send them to their friends. There are different types of viral videos, but in order to be successful online they have to be the best in their category (funny, moving, shocking, or involving celebrities) and something we as viewers would want to be associated with when we share. Working at Declare Yourself we found success with our videos in all of these categories – and we quickly learned what did and didnt work.
My friend just sent me a video from the LGBT’s Courage Campaign called “Don’t Divorce Me.” I loved it and felt inspired to pass it on, and it got me thinking about how important it is for nonprofits and causes to promote ther video online successfully. We have no money so the return on the money we put in the video has to come from the level of exposure we can get it online. So I think everyone should read Julia Angwin’s recent article in the WSJ, Recipe for a Successful Viral Video Campaign.Below are excepts but you can get the entire article here.
As the amount of video online has exploded, it’s harder than ever – and it was never easy – to break out.
“If you just upload to YouTube, it’s like dropping a grain of sand on the beach,” says Ian Schafer, chief executive of New York ad agency Deep Focus. “But it’s weird, you can’t just blast these out as a press release. People need to feel that sense of discovery when they come onto it.”
The key is to master the art of subtle marketing. Disingenuous marketing, such as Trident’s unsuccessful viral video campaign for a fictitious TV show, are quickly dismissed by Web-savvy audiences.
Experts say that there are three important factors in creating a sense of discovery in a viral video campaign.
Great Content
It goes without saying that content of the video has to be worth being discovered. Many popular online videos are short – under three minutes – and have some elements of cognitive dissonance. Excluding celebrity videos, many popular videos are deliberately bizarre juxtapositions, such as HotForWords – a woman in a low-cut blouse talking about etymology.
In the fall of 2006, Tom Dickson, founder of Utah blender manufacturer Blendtec, donned a white lab coat and blended a rotisserie chicken, a McDonalds Extra Value meal, a bag of marbles and a rake. The video got picked up by the news aggregator Digg.com, and within a week it had attracted more than 5 million views.
Since then, Mr. Dickson has blended everything from an iPhone to a TomTom navigational device, and built a following for his regular “Will it Blend?” segments. “We’re not creating advertising,” says Blendtec Vice President George Wright. “We’re creating something people want to watch.” He says that Blendtec’s videos have been viewed more than 200 million times.
Build a Fan Base
Huge audiences – such as the 15 million who have watched more than 200 people freeze in place at New York City’s Grand Central Station – don’t often materialize overnight.
Charlie Todd, the founder of Improv Everywhere, which staged the Grand Central video, began loading his troupe’s videos onto YouTube soon after the site launched in 2005. He has staged more than 80 events – such as the No Pants Subway Ride 2009 – and posted most of them on YouTube.
“We have a pop-up at the end of the video that says ‘Click here to see all of our other videos and subscribe,’” Mr. Todd says. “That’s one thing that everyone should do on YouTube.” As a result, Improv Everywhere has 105,000 subscribers who receive notifications whenever he posts a new video.
Mr. Todd also promotes his videos to bloggers, and he spends time reading blogs to see which ones would likely be interested in a particular video. But he prefers to do his promotion anonymously, usually by e-mailing a tip to a general blog address. “I think that’s probably better than tracking down the e-mail address of the person who runs the blog and will get irritated,” he says. “Just send it in and say check it out.”
Search Engine Optimization
It’s also important to make sure your video can be easily discovered through YouTube search. “You have to put in dedication and time,” says Aaron Zamost, spokesman for Google Inc.’s YouTube. “People don’t know how much work uploaders put into this stuff.”
Mr. Zamost said videos should have clear titles, an accurate description and appropriate keyword tags so that they can appears correctly in a YouTube search. He also suggests using YouTube Insight to figure out which blogs are directing traffic to your video and where your viewers live – so, for instance, if your video is popular in Brazil you can add a tag for Brazil so it will pop up in searches there. “People are using these tools on a daily basis to optimize their videos,” Mr. Zamost says.
It’s also part of the YouTube culture for videos to piggy-back on each other’s success. If a video is popular, YouTubers often race to create ‘video responses’ that will then appear next to the popular video. A great example of that is a video highlighting a glitch in an Electronic Arts’ video game that appeared to show a pixelated Tiger Woods walking on water. In response, the gamemaker posted a video that showed the real Tiger Woods literally walking on water – which attracted a far bigger audience than the original video.
Mr. Schafer of the ad agency Deep Focus says he often recommends his clients take the low-risk piggy-back approach. “We attach ourselves to content we know will travel,” Mr. Schafer says, “instead of creating something with the hope that it might.”
That way he can be sure that his video will be discovered – which is the whole point.
Before I left Declare Yourself, we had just launched Born Again American. It was a country/folk song that was filmed and recorded live in different iconic American locations and sung by average Americans (with good voices). We did very little to promote it other than launch it at the Declare Yourself Inauguration party in DC during Inauguration Week, and in less than a month it has been viewed by 4 million people on www.BornAgainAmerican.org. When I looked at the Google Analytics I saw that 60% of the traffic is direct traffic, meaning people were hearing about it and going straight to the website. Another 39.5% were referrals from emails – meaning the people were sending the link in emails to their friends. Only 0.5% of the traffic was from search engines and almost no traffic was from any media sites or blogs – meaning there is almost no press on this video. The success of the Born Again American video is entirely attributed to word of mouth marketing.
So while Julia’s three tips are an absolute necessity for your viral video to get any play, great content will get you further than any marketing gimic.
original post by in WSJ by Julia Angwin
