Is there a secret to making a successful viral video, or so they just happen by chance? Many people have answers for this question, and often suggest that the content must be interesting. However, at least one viral video marking company, The Commotion Group, is solely focused on the mechanics of pushing the video. They claim that they can get 100,000 views for any video they choose to promote, and they won’t charge unless they do. While admitting that interesting content is important if you want a million views, at 100,000 views they believe the actual video content is not a major factor. Dan, the director, is an engineering student at Stanford, and shares his secrets on a blog: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1938731,00.html#ixzz0beMKjlQ6
What is their secret? As explained by Dan, they don’t wait for the videos to catch on, they go out and actively promote them, in as many places on the web as possible. Dan’s group prefers marketing short videos 15-30 seconds in length. They also use videos that can be remixed and thus remarked.
The commotion Group advises staying away from a straight out ad format. They also suggest making the video shocking, so it will challenge the potential viewer. “Anaconda attacks dog,” for example has gotten over 600,000 views in three years.
According to Dan, the way to really parlay views is to get listed on the You Tube most viewed page. To do this a video must get a lot of views in one day, or at least 50,000 views. Dan’s group posts videos they promote on as many blogs as possible, even paying blog owners to post their video. Next they join forums. They start a relevant thread, create conversation and embed their video.They post videos on My Space, where many people will let people embed videos in the comment section of their MySpace page.
They supplement these strategies by posting to email lists and sharing with friends.
They work hard to keep the video on the daily most viewed list for 48 hours, after which it will move to the weekly most viewed list. Now, they do a little manipulating. Since titles can be changed, they start out with a shocking or attention grabbing title, only later switching to a more relevent title. Titles with words such as “shocking,” “exclusive,” “behind the scenes,” tend to do better.
Dan provides a bit of useful advice. You Tube allows companies to post three thumbnail shots. They take one shot from the exact middle of the video. So be sure to put a catchy shot in the exact middle of your video, preferably of a face or person. Then provide two other high quality thumbnails portraying attention grabbing shots.
Three other suggestions include creation of controversial comments to the video, which will draw attention and posting of multiple videos with a similar subject matter. If people like one, they will tend to view the others. Finally Commotion Group suggests starting out with around four unique subject tags. As views mount up, you can broaden the tags to draw a wider audience search. Less interested people will be much more likely to watch your video once it already has a lot of views.
Thanks to Winmax Video of California for sponsoring this report. Winmax specializes in commercial video including trade show videos, viral videos, restaurant video, and corporate video
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