A viral video is any video that becomes popular through electronic media sharing, usually via the internet. For example, a viral video produced on the ubiquitous mobile phone camera might be uploaded to YouTube or other video sharing sites, sent to social media sites like Facebook, or perhaps distributed through emails.

Often these videos record some unusual event or public performance which is not available through traditional channels such as television. They provide an independent view of world events, unaltered through any form of editing or censorship. Sometimes they are simple entertainment with humorous or satirical content, or spoofs of TV shows, advertisements or movies.

Viral movie clips have created some accidental celebrities. Ordinary people have collected a fan base of millions of fans, often matching star celebrity numbers. Advertisers have of course recognized this, and might add a short advertisement to the start or finish of relevant clips. Alternatively a ’sales button’ might be displayed during the clip which, if clicked, will take the viewer to a site where a related product can be purchased.

Education is another sector where clips are used. As instructional material for teachers and parents they can be invaluable.

Sometimes education material is used for business sales or charity contributions, for example if the viewer needs to know how to replace a laptop screen, or disassemble a laptop. The producer company will give the option of buying the broken or faulty component, a very effective method of advertising to a pre-qualified audience. Alternatively a charity might advertise a particular individual or generic need for funds.

Another common use for viral clips is of course the music and entertainment industry. They have not been slow to see the marketing potential. The use of short movie samples has grown enormously in the past few years, and has proved very effective.

If you are looking for viral video production or viral video producers, you’ve definitely come to the right place. Please contact us to find out more on how to get those videos produced.

The key factor here is–viral in what sense?  If your  video is produced solely with the purpose of being viral, it may present no benefit to your business.  At viral video production, we make sure that we find the right balance for your video–so that it is viral within your target market, and not between teenagers who would never spend a dollar on your products anyways.  Contact us today to find out more about our viral video production offerings!

Title optimization is another important component in making a video go viral. In youtube, you can change the title of your video whenever you want. Because of this, it can work to your advantage to use a catchy (and sometimes misleading) title at the beginning, and then once the video starts to catch some attention, to switch the title to a more relevant title. Another idea is to use the phrases “leaked video”, “exclusive”, or “behind the scenes.”

Image via Wikipedia

Optimizing the Thumbnail

The best way to get people to actually click on your video is by using a compelling thumbnail.  There are a few consideration you need to make and to keep in mind.  Youtube has 3 ways of creating a thumbnail for you and one of them is using the frame that appears directly in the middle of your video. It’s definetely not a surprise to know that videos with a half naked woman get tens of thousands of views.  You can’t say that this is always the best strategy, but it is certainly something to keep in mind.  Remember that your thumbnails should always be clear and ideally it will have a face or a persons body in it.

Commenting

One of the most effective strategies for gaining viral video marketing traffic is to have multiple youtube user accounts. These accounts can be used to add comments to your videos, often comments that may stir up controversy.  Then from another one of your accounts you can post a reply or have other people in your office posting replies. This gains interest in your videos. For every 1000 views you will probably get 1 comment as most people on youtube are browsing the site while not logged in.

Don’t be afraid to delete commments if they aren’t what you’re looking for. Remember this is a marketing campaign, and you looking to get the most benefit and exposure for your brand, so don’t be afraid to delete negative comments.

Part 4 coming soon.

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In part 2 of ths Viral Video Marketing feature, we will get into the nuts and bolts of attaining tens of thousands of page views. The main idea of marketing on youtube is to take control of the sites traffic and direct it to your video.  Somewhere around 100 million videos are watched every single day on youtube, and many of those views are from people that click on the “Videos” tab at the top of the site.

If we are successful in getting onto the videos tab page, then we are much more likely to get what we are going for: massive page views. The videos tab has 21 videos on it. If we take one video slot then we should be able to grab roughtly 1/26th of the traffic, while also considering that videos found at the top of the page will be getting more clicks than the ones at the bottom.

So, what is the best way to try to reach that first 50,000 video views that we need in order to get our videos onto the most viewed list?

Blogs: You must first find relevant blogs and try to get them to post your video on their site. The most effective way of doing this is paying them to do it. It’s very effective but its also not against any rules!

Forums: Start new forum posts and embed the video in them.  Sign up with a few accounts and get the dialog rolling by posting from the different accounts to each other. You can get other people on board and this will really get the ball rolling.

Myspace:Lots of myspace users let you embed videos into your posts. You can take advantage of this and get tons more videos viewed.

Facebook: Share your stuff on Facebook. If you’ve built a big presence on Facebook, then sharing the video with all your friends can have a great impact on it. You can also write notes on friends walls telling people about the video, tagging friends, or posting it on Facebooks own video sharing area of their site.

Email Lists: If you have a list of emails then send it out to them! If your list is open to receiving your videos then this can be a very workable and worthwhile strategy.

Friends: Try to have all your friends view the videos as well as even having them try to share it on Facebook.

Part 3 Coming Soon.

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Have you ever checked out a video on youtube and asked yourself, how in the world did this user get 150,000 page views? Well, it’s pretty likely it didn’t happen naturally. It was probably promoted by a company that specializes in it.

When most people think about “viral videos” they imagine funny videos that travel around and are spread through email, and are posted on myspace, google video, facebook, digg, blogs, etc - videos that can get tons of views.

There are literally tens of thousands of videos uploaded to youtube each day. No matter how much you think the video your uploading might be “viral”, almost no one is going to find it and watch it.

A viral video can be useful to many types of clients, but they are especially popular for consumer related brands and films. Hollywood movie studioes, record labels, as well as many others.

It is not necessary to have a crazy good viral video for it to get a lot of pageviews. It is more than manageable to have a mediocre video and still achieve 100,000 + pageviews. Here are a few rough guidelines you can follow:

• Keep it short: make your video 15 - 30 seconds. If it’s part of a larger story then break it into smaller clips.
• Make it remixable: Make a video that can be remixed by various people, many many times
• Don’t just make it an ad: make the video amazing, not an advertisement
• Use untrue headlines: Make the watcher say “hey, did that really happen??”
• Sex Appeal: Never underestimate the power of sex appeal. It’s a great fall-back strategy.

Part II Coming Soon

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A viral video production helps you generate buzz about your product or service. It can be anything from a funny skit or video that is used to increase brand awareness or possibly selling additional products. The idea is to make very interesting to try and get users to spread your viral video through out the blogsphere as well as the video sharing websites. The great thing about viral videos is that through the internet, marketing your viral video is very cost effective. On many services it is virtually free to submit your videos.

There are many benefits of viral video production.  One of the biggest benefits is that viral videos are nearly free to distribute and to market. They are able to increase brand and name recognition as well as increase awareness about your products and services.

viral marketing is how people share and pass on interesting content such as movies and songs via the internets. The great think about viral marketing is it is a lot better than sending out dozens of spam messages via email. People share it because they want to! Viral commercials can be of many different forms such as funny videos, flash games, images, or sometimes even text. Viral videos can often be targeted to very specific demographics. Cheeky emails often work, ones that are sent from friend to friend wheneve they open their inbox.

Researchers believe that viral marketing is a very effective marekting tools. Supposedly the brain makes a decision in a 20th of a second after viewing a webpage, and this was published in the Journal of Behavior and Information. According to recent statistics, sufing the internet has overtaken television at the most popular recreational activity! By the end of 2008 it is estimated thatn there will be more than 7 billion people using the inernet.

Wikipedia says viral video is just video clips that gain widespread popularity through the process of sharing it through the internet most notably through email and IM messages, as well as blogs and video sharing sites.

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