Videos that go Viral: What’s Their Secret to Success?

Posted on December 3, 2012 in Marketing, Video Marketing, Video Optimization, Video SEO, VSEO

We’ve all seen the video of the football player flipping over the defender on his way to the end zone, which was a cleverly disguised viral video for AT&T and their 4G network. The potency of a viral video to bring attention to a service or product is not something to be ignored. The following are three tips for social video success.

SearchPro Systems, a pioneering VSEO Company in New Hampshire.

1. Understand your Audience: With all SEO, the most important aspect is to ask who your audience is. What does your audience like to talk about with their family and friends? In this day and age the power of an online video to start a conversation is important to consider. You can think of your audience seeing your video and then running over to their friends to show it on their smartphones. Videos are a powerful median to work with as they supply conversation points and can provide validation from peers. The goal for your video is to have a high value in your core target audience, because your video is entertaining or pertinent to the group, to make it more likely to get repeat viewings.

2. What does your Audience Like to Watch? Now that you understand your audience, you’ll be able to better identify what sort of content makes your audience happy. These content triggers could be a number of things:

  • Attraction/appeal
  • Humor
  • Surprise or Twist in the video
  • Something completely Random (i.e. the Old Spice Guy)
  • Shocking
  • Meaningful or Illuminating
  • Over the top Spectacular
  • Relevant to Current Events

All of these triggers have the power to generate shares and views among your target audience and can even garner interest from those that aren’t your target.

3. Go All the Way: What this means is that when you’ve decided on a content trigger, make it as strong as possible. You don’t want a video that only feels half done and only evokes a minimum reaction from a viewer. If it’s funny, make it over the top funny to elicit a hearty laugh. If shocking is your goal, focus on getting that fearful gasp or scream from your audience. The best video is the one that gets a physical response from a viewer; this will translate into the viewer remembering the video and sharing it with their friends.

These tips can provide you with a strong video that could go viral and register into widespread notoriety for your video which in return, will provide exposure for your company. Find your message, figure out your target audience, and focus on one or two content triggers, and you’ll have success in creating videos with the chance of going viral.