As far as viral videos goes, is this a good way to market? And though it's mostly up the public and the time you want to put into it/staying on top of it, what are the best ways to go about getting one started? I've read a few articles, but I'd like to get personal feedback from those who have helped aid in the spread of a viral video. Any input will be helpful! Thank you.
The point of a viral video is that you do not have to market it. People like your video so much that they will email it to other people, or send links to the video over instant messenger programs. The whole point of a viral video is that is spreads like a virus, from one person to the next. The creator of the virus does not have to do anything, except make the video. Nobody can tell you if a video will become "viral" or not. Keep in mind that maybe a dozen out of a million videos might go "viral". The word viral is in quotes because its over used. Everyone would love to make a video that gets a million views in a day, but that rarely happens. I have seen people on youtube that made a good video, and their second video was a flop. Even some people that can claim that they made a viral video can not repeat it. If you want to make a video that is popular, keep in mind that everyone loves pets and kids. If you can catch your pet doing something funny, then post that on youtube. Or if you have kids, video them doing something funny. Go to youtube and look up "Fred" and "MadV". Fred is the most subscribed person on youtube. MadV can post a video, and in a few days it has 100,000 views. Fred can post a video, and within a few hours it has 100,000 views.
Do you want to make a good viral? Then invite some girlfriends and do groose thing, or chop of your ... like the bme , You have to create something 'extreme', extremly funny, extremly groose, extremly lame or extremely shocking. Then you have to do initial promoting, but once other people view it,they will share it with friends and it becomes viral, people post it to digg or su... and so on
One other tool is issuing a press release - but - and it is a big but - there needs to be some oddball or real news angle to the content for that to get picked-up. As I am sure you know and others already posted here, animals, kids and crashes are staples...
perfect. thanks, guys. I've done a a little research on the subject and there are actually companies out there who get paid for making videos viral, so I know there are some aspects that the maker can control, but all in all... it really is up to the public. where would it be good to post? besides the obvious, youtube/myspace/facebook... any suggestions of where to get it started?
you can't force a viral video - viral status is something that emerges and if there's any hint of commercial or advertising money in it, it won't go viral. For viral to work, you need either the right time and place, something funny, and something raw. How a video like this would be useful for advertising purposes is beyond me. I would spend more time making real videos that are so FUNNY that people pass them around. Look at the Mac Milk WTF videos, the Durex balloon animals video - stuff like that gets around the internet even though it's commercial.