Viral content is highly coveted, but getting your videos to
go viral is no easy feat. Highly sharable content can give your
business a lift, leading new people back to your site and increasing
conversions. Creating a viral video, however, is far from easy.
Having a piece of content go viral is like winning the
Internet’s version of the lottery. It’s incredibly difficult to achieve
and often hard to replicate. For every viral video success, there are
dozens, if not hundreds, of failures. Even Upworthy, the king of
virality, only has 0.3 percent of posts going viral.
But there are still actions you can take to improve your
odds of viral success. Help your company reap the benefits of video with
these six tactics to help your videos go viral:
Be Short and Sweet
Keep in mind, you’re creating content for the 140 character
Twitter generation. Our attention spans are getting shorter and
shorter, which means it’s time to tighten up your video content. A
survey published in The New York Times
found more than 19 percent of people had left a video after only 10
seconds. By a minute in, the video had lost a staggering 44 percent of
viewers.
Since you’ll lose almost half of your audience by the end
of minute one, put your most interesting, fascinating, funny, or
surprising information first and foremost in your video. Creating viral
video content is one place where you never want to save the best for
last.
Be Upbeat
Jonah Berger, author of the book Contagious: Why Things Catch On,
found the most highly sharable content tended to evoke strong emotions
in the reader or viewer. And of those emotions, the most sharable
content tended to be that which had a positive or upbeat note. Using
empirical research, Berger and UPenn Professor Katherine Milkman found happy emotions tended to outperform sad emotions in the realm of sharability.
To be sharable, content needs to strike an emotional chord
in viewers. These same viewers are more likely to share upbeat content,
so if you want your videos to go viral, it’s important to strive for a
positive spin.
Be Timely
If you want your videos to make the jump to virality, it
might be time to brush up on your current events. By hooking into an
existing Internet meme or popular topic, you increase the odds your
content will be viewed and shared by those already interested in the
topic.
This can be anything from a current event in the world, to a
pop culture topic dominating the news. For example, just look at how
many parodies of popular entertainment like Game of Thrones and Frozen
exist on video channels. If you speak the same language as your target
audience and present interest in the same topics, they’ll be more likely
to share your content.
Be Involved
One of the keys to virality is engagement. Engaging with an
audience can lead to loyalty and interest. After all, everyone likes to
be heard. This is the approach taken by companies like Old Spice in
several of advertising campaigns.
At one point, the Old Spice man, played by actor Isaiah Mustafa, answered fan questions on social media in short YouTube videos.
Adding an engagement portion to your videos, like answering viewer
questions, can give your content a boost and make it more sharable.
Be Informative
Your audience is always searching for new information and
better ways to perform everyday tasks. If your video content is
interesting and informative, it is also highly sharable. Everyone wants
to learn something they didn’t already know, and videos can be a great
tool for curating top-notch information.
At my company Pluto.TV, we
curate the best videos for viewers, whether they’re looking for world
news or cat videos. You need to take a similar approach to your videos,
and curate the best and most informative content to surprise and inform
your viewers.
Be Inspiring
By now, the incredible story of Upworthy’s success is old news. The site skyrocketed to more than six million unique page views per month in its first year, thanks in part to its famous (and infamous) headlines. Another reason is because the site looks to find inspiring stories to share with their large readership.
To get the viral edge you want, look for stories to inspire
your readership, whether it’s a story of overcoming struggle, standing
up in the face of adversity, or just finding success. Audiences love a
good inspirational story, and the more inspirational it is, the more
your audience will want to share it with others.
Creating viral videos isn’t easy — if it was, every
business would have a few viral hits. These six pieces of advice can
help you improve your content’s sharability and quality, improving your
odds at viral success. See more:
What are your tips for creating viral videos? Share in the comments!
