viral

BryMan1

BryMan1

Active Member
What makes your clip go "viral" or lots of views anyway
obviously the content has to be good, but do you advertise it? facebook etc (or even here)
or do you just let it do its thing???

do "tags" really help people find your video?? coz ive tried searching a tag that I know ive written and it doesn't show, ill even do a "recent upload" to assist with the search....
 
Viral is a relative term. In kids channels, 20-30M views/video is the norm these days for some channels and some videos. While on Fb/Tw and pretty much anywhere else, 20M hits is mega viral. But 100M views would be viral for a kids channel. That's 4 times the population of Australia. Yet such a video won't make the evening news, but a laughing baby would. I saw a Youtuber being interviewed on one of the morning shows here in Australia, they were talking like she had a mega channel and viral stuff. Checked her out, total views in several years was under 10M with like 10k subs. Hardly viral in any book. But for the morning show, her content seemed to be. So go figure, what is viral, who defines it?

But generally, for content to be viral in the pure sense of the word, it need to elicit a visceral reaction in the viewer. As a presenter said during a Vidcon talk, it must make people laugh hysterically, not just smile, or it must make then fuming mad, filled with rage, not just upset, or it must make them scared to the point of peeing their pants, not just make the pulse skip a beat. The stronger the physical reaction, the more viral potential energy the video has. To release that energy involves several dozen factors. Promotion across active social media accounts, paid advertising, lead ups before that viral video, all must be executed flawlessly. The video should also hit the zeitgeist, current hot and controversial topics and new takes on them would have more potential energy in them.

A good topic might be Trump vs the NFL - emotionally charged topic, gets lefties and righties and many in between fired up - can you do a different take on it, perhaps instead the players kneeling, they do something else. Don't know what, something... get all the backend setup and fire it off. A few $k into promotions on the first day would not go astray, especially if you can laser target the audience via Tw & Fb and of course Yt.

That same presenter during Vidcon said the viral campaigns they execute for clients takes several weeks to several months lead up and prep, with budgets anywhere from a few thousand dollars to several hundred thousand for big corporates. Viral is big business, it needs big dollars to execute. Tags won't cut it unfortunately...
 
Tags can help. Yes, the content has to be good or interesting and it has to reach the right people. So luck definitely plays a role as well
 
KiddieToysReview gave a ton of great information, and as others have said there is a lot of luck involved, too. There is a viral video from 2013 called "Girl Learns to Dance in a Year (TIME LAPSE)". Currently, the video has 10, 019, 513 views, and the creator is even offering a viral service due to the success of the video, but when you check out the other videos on her channel the amount of views on her videos vary from three thousand to a million. So, even though she created a viral video four years ago, she hasn't been able to reproduce its success.

Another element of a viral video is what I like to call "the ego element". Because the determining factor of whether or not a video becomes viral is the sharing of the video, you need to give people a reason to share it. And what better way to get people to share a video than by stroking their ego. Have you seen those grammar/spelling/IQ tests that are all over Facebook? If you have, it was likely because a friend of yours shared it because they received a high score on the test (which in my experience it rigged). People like to share things that make them look good. So come up with an idea that will "stroke the ego" of your viewer and heavily promote it.

And tags are a very small SEO contributor unless the keyword that you're trying to rank is very, very low competition. Try to stuff as many keywords in the title and description as possible. But keep in mind that onpage SEO will only take you so far, the competition has to be pretty much nonexistent. For harder keywords you'll need plenty of offpage SEO.
 
We haven’t had a viral video for about a year and in that case, we were the first channel to have a review of the ghostbusters movie that released last year. We didn’t sign and nda at the screening so there was no embargo for us andcreddit was all over our review since it was the first onebout. After four hours, we were pulling in about a million views per hour. It wasn’t planned. When we went to the screening we had no intention of making a video but the movie was so bad we had to share our opinion on it and it obviously paid off.
 
thanks for the reply people, some interesting comments to, made interesting reading with my morning coffee lol, I agree luck has to be in it, I currently have a clip that has 800views and seems to go up 15/20 everyday, I didn't expect it to be that popular, but I advertised it in the normal manner, fb/tw etc like I do all my videos but that was over a month ago lol so I'm always intrigued as to how people are seeing it lol... (I'm not complaining) I have to say it is one of my best clips yet, but I have done a couple of other really good ones but only got 200+ views.... but I'm assuming its down to the subject, ie its a Bluetooth cordless hose and I'm guessing as it says Bluetooth and its still a very popular word that's how I'm getting so many....

again ty for the comments :)
 
I'm going to tell you a bit of a secret (it's really not). If you look at most "viral" videos, they're pretty much selling something. Marketing companies are paid lots and lots of money to position videos with subtly-placed products in them on YouTube and elsewhere to get lots of views. Often, it's just plain old advertising (movies just do this...they pay to get their trailers put in front of a ton of viewers every day), but often, it's something that can be either used with a product in it, or they'll buy an interesting video from someone who has done something visually arresting and place that video with their ads in front of it. They will also pay entertainment "news" outlets to pick up the videos and play them. If you've ever seen an early-evening entertainment show play a YouTube video, most of the time, that's a paid spot.

There are some truly viral videos out there, of course, but they are few and far-between, and once they start to pick up steam, the creator of the video will be flooded with offers to buy the video (for a pittance) and it will become the property of a larger entity that will use it in a way to get a ton more views on whatever they want to focus eyeballs upon.
 
6StringMadMan said:
KiddieToysReview gave a ton of great information, and as others have said there is a lot of luck involved, too. There is a viral video from 2013 called "Girl Learns to Dance in a Year (TIME LAPSE)". Currently, the video has 10, 019, 513 views, and the creator is even offering a viral service due to the success of the video, but when you check out the other videos on her channel the amount of views on her videos vary from three thousand to a million. So, even though she created a viral video four years ago, she hasn't been able to reproduce its success.

Another element of a viral video is what I like to call "the ego element". Because the determining factor of whether or not a video becomes viral is the sharing of the video, you need to give people a reason to share it. And what better way to get people to share a video than by stroking their ego. Have you seen those grammar/spelling/IQ tests that are all over Facebook? If you have, it was likely because a friend of yours shared it because they received a high score on the test (which in my experience it rigged). People like to share things that make them look good. So come up with an idea that will "stroke the ego" of your viewer and heavily promote it.

And tags are a very small SEO contributor unless the keyword that you're trying to rank is very, very low competition. Try to stuff as many keywords in the title and description as possible. But keep in mind that onpage SEO will only take you so far, the competition has to be pretty much nonexistent. For harder keywords you'll need plenty of offpage SEO.
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Agree with pretty much everything you said. Only thing I'd advise against is stuffing too many of your keywords in the description. Keyword stuffing is against youtubes terms and can get your channel terminated.
 
sometimes very confused when in say viral, for videos that become viral sometimes unexpected videos and videos made from ajah instead viral, maybe they just record using ajah smartphones without editing even viral, but the video made with the concept of the outside normal and made in a few days, the result is not even viral, do you also see this?
 
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