Image via CrunchBase, source unknown

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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