How To Make Videos Viral

We are all familiar with the term viral video. But for those of you that have been locked in a basement without internet access for the last three years, let me explain in a very simple manner. So basically, you create a video and post it on a site like YouTube, then it get’s embedded into a bunch of blogs and Myspace profiles, it gets shared on Facebook, it gets pushed up on Digg, the link is passed around via instant messenger, and before you know it you’ve got over a million views. Think of a virus that’s very contagious and how fast it can spread. Now relate that to video.

But how do you get millions of views, and is it always legitimate? Well in some cases it is. The king of YouTube for quite a while was “Evolution of Dance”, a video where a guy dances to a bunch of different songs in the order they were written in history. I bet you’ve seen it, because just about everyone has. This was a legitimate viral video, and it became amazingly popular very quickly. On the other hand, there are videos that stir up controversy. For instance, “CANSEI DE SER SEXY Music is My Hot Hot Sex” a remix of that Brazilian song heard in the popular iPod Touch commercials just took over the #1 spot on YouTube. It came out of nowhere! Likewise, there are hundreds of comments accusing the poster of hacking YouTube, using auto-page refresh scripts, using bots, etc. I must say, as a guy with extensive experience in the online video space, all these accusation may be true. I’ve seen numerous tools created over the last few years that claim to get your video more views. Whether any of them actually work is another story. YouTube does a pretty good job of keeping track of IPs, fending off proxies, etc. I’d be amazed if anyone could actually get 1M views using a computerized program.

There are other ways to do it that are legitimate. People have been writing articles for the longest time relating to how long a video needs to be, what type of content is most popular, how to get popular YouTube stars to post video responses, how sex appeal can get you to the top, how placing a certain image as the middle frame can increase clicks based off the thumbnail alone. I’ve even seen agencies created that focus on consulting for these types of services. The Comotion Group for instace has already been hired to promote close to 100 videos. They are actually successful, claiming that with one case they got 6 million views for one client. Agencies that have contacts at all the major blogs and can pay them off to post your video. Some people ask me why I still have close to a thousand friends on Facebook. I haven’t pruned my list at all, I don’t even know half the people I’m friends with, and I don’t even attend classes at the school that is my network. This is basically because of the viral effect of my network. When I create a group promoting something, I can add close to 1000 people, 1000 people see items I share, and most importantly they see videos I post. I don’t have any videos currently, but if I was a “YouTuber” I would definitely be sharing these videos on Facebook and posting bulletins on Myspace. That is how the viral effect starts. It’s all about exposure.