I stumbled across a TED video by Kevin Allocca, the Trend Manager at YouTube. The purpose of his video actually addressed the same issue I was asking, Why do videos go viral. He reminds us that back in the day it was extremely difficult for an ordinary person to receive any type of recognition, let alone become a celebrity or be the next pop star or comedian. However, web video has given every single one of us the opportunity to become famous for the creative things we do.
Allocca claims there are three secrets that specifically help to accelerate a YouTube video, taste makers, participation and unexpectedness (2011). Firstly, taste makers concern those individuals or groups of people that have the ability to bring new and interesting videos to a larger audience. Quite often videos will be uploaded and will only acquire a small response, until a taste maker takes a liking and sends views into the millions! Usually taste makers are in the form of a celebrity, or a social media fanatic. For example Jimmy Kimmel, an American talk show host has a habit of engaging with his audience through hilarious YouTube videos. One that I've always loved is the 'I ate all your Halloween candy' which has been watched over 32 million times!
Participation is a result of a creative video than inspires others to involve themselves by responding, usually in the form of a parody. Individuals come up with cool, fun ways to edit and adapt a video to become a part of the YouTube phenomenon and get their creativeness recognised! YouTube has become a community and businesses have recognised this by taking advantage of the participation element by requesting viewers to respond. We have all seen Three Networks dancing pony advertisement, but did you notice it asked viewers to access the 'Pony Mixer' to mash up their own dancing ponies! Take a look...
Unexpectedness concerns the uniqueness and element of surprise a video should hold in order to go viral. Ehrenberg and Barnard can support this as he claims the sole purpose of advertising isn't to be persuasive, but to create loud content that jogs an individuals memory (Ehrenberg and Barnard, 1997).
In terms of going viral as a marketing technique, Mekanism a large agency that designs viral campaigns suggest that in order to succeed you must adopt this approach;
people + platform x snowball effect = VIRAL
(Howes, 2012)
The people element can be likened in some respect to taste makers, as Howes confirms that in order to go viral you must firstly contact online 'influencers' in advance. However, dissimilar to Allocca, this approach suggests organisations must pick their choices wisely, someone with a large audience is not necessarily going to send the desired message, it could potentially be quite damaging to an organisation if it was interpreted incorrectly.
Platform refers to the fact there needs to be a strategy beyond 'Lets make a YouTube video'. YouTube provides ten categories, these categories need to be considered in terms of what one will enhance the number of views. The entertainment and comedy category is quite obviously the most popular therefore harder to go viral, organisations need to understand which category will leverage their video (Howes, 2012).
Finally, the snowball effect is where by organisations coordinate with numerous 'influencers' and create relationships with popular websites in order to feature their videos. This exposure leads to neutral pick ups by blogs that search the internet such as Laughing Squid for interesting viral content, thus the snowball effect.
So there you have it, two different approaches that will help enable your videos to go viral. If only it were that easy! It has become extremely difficult for videos to go viral due to the large amount of content that is continuously being uploaded. Only a tiny percentage will reach over a million views (Allocca, 2011). Additionally, businesses cant play it safe if they want to go viral, very few individuals will watch your video if they believe it to be another dull advertisement trying to get them to buy. However, individuals will watch content that engages with them and allows them to participate, businesses need to take a risk! (Launch Spark, 2014).
Take a look at the links within the text or below to gain a greater understanding on how your video could go viral. YOU could become famous.
References
Allocca, K. (2011) Why Videos go Viral. [online] TED. Available from: http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_allocca_why_videos_go_viral#t-415102 [Accessed: 1st June 2014]
Ehrenberg, A and Barnard, N. (1997) Advertising: Strongly Persuasive or Nudging? Journal of Advertising Research, 21-31.
Howes, L. (2012) How to go Viral on YouTube: The Untold Truth about Getting Views. [online] Forbes. Available from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/lewishowes/2012/08/09/how-to-go-viral-on-youtube-the-untold-truth-behind-getting-views/ [Accessed: 1st June 2014]
Launch Spark. (2014) How do I make my video go Viral? [online] Available from: https://www.launchsparkvideo.com/how-do-i-make-my-video-go-viral/ [Accessed: 1st June 2014]
