Social Media: Viral Videos

My favorite viral videos:

According to The Secret Strategies Behind Many "Viral" Videos by Dan, almost all videos with over 100,000 views did not get that many viewers on their own.
This article goes over nine key strategies that professionals use to help make videos go viral.
1. Not all the videos that you watch online are what they seem to be. If they go viral, someone probably meant for that to happen.
2. There are a few key things that will help make a video go big:

• Make it short: 15-30 seconds is ideal; break down long stories into bite-sized clips
• Design for remixing: create a video that is simple enough to be remixed over and over again by others. Ex: “Dramatic Hamster”
• Don’t make an outright ad: if a video feels like an ad, viewers won’t share it unless it’s really amazing. Ex: Sony Bravia
• Make it shocking: give a viewer no choice but to investigate further. Ex: “UFO Haiti”
• Use fake headlines: make the viewer say, “Holy shit, did that actually happen?!” Ex: “Stolen Nascar”
• Appeal to sex: if all else fails, hire the most attractive women available to be in the video. Ex: “Yoga 4 Dudes”

3.How to get viewed is obviously the most important part of this process. How will people find out about this video? The best way to do this is by reaching out to a vast amount of mediums. Get attention from blogs, facebook, youtube, twitter, the list goes on and on.

The rest of the steps continue to spill on secrets for how to make a video viral with interesting ideas such as adding thumbnails, or creating some type of controversy in the comment area.

The article was very interesting. Before reading this I had absolutely no idea how much work went into making a video go viral. Learning all these new tips made me want to try it. But, reading some of the stats made me realize just how impossible it actually is to accomplish.

The second article I read was called Viral Video Star Hits Big Screen by Nina Metz.
This article took a completely different perspective on viral videos and how they can be used to gain celebrity for those that are in them.

After Jack Rebney had a video go viral by accident he became famous. The outtakes of a commercial he filmed 20+ years ago were posted to YouTube and became a hit. Now film directors are interested in making a documentary of his life. The 80 year old man never had any idea that his crazy out takes would ever win him so much fame.

I loved reading this and thinking how crazy and one in a million it would be for something like this to happen to me or someone that I know.