Producing Viral Videos
From Concept to Creation
What are Viral Videos?
‘Viral Videos’ has become quite a buzz word on the internet over the past few years.So what is a viral video, and what is it that makes the best viral videos stand out? According to the wikipedia, a Viral Video is a video clip that gains widespread popularity being passed around the internet through email, blogs, video sharing sites, and social networking. Renowned Viral Video creator, Len Foley (the Bionic Burger) describes them as: “a mental virus. It’s a contagious idea or experience that invades the imaginations of many thousands of people, which is then spread to many MORE thousands of people.” Once a video reaches a critical mass, it has a massive snowball effect, and cannot be stopped.
 These web videos can be seen by millions of viewers worldwide. Many have also been featured on live television and on the news.
Some viral video creators have gone on to become celebrities and appear on television programs like Oprah. Viral Videos are typically 1 – 3 minutes in length, although the most popular web video of all time,‘The Evolution of Dance’ (seen over 90 million times), goes for 6 minutes.
Initially, many viral videos featured budding comedians in extremely funny videos and bands. It wasn’t long before business marketers saw the potential and jumped on the bandwagon. These days many professionals and big corporations are creating viral videos to rapidly expand their businesses online, promote their products and to increase brand awareness.
What are the Traits of the Best Viral Videos?
As the success of a viral video depends on the number of people they come into contact with, they need to be unique and capture the attention and interest of their audience. Being a web based media, it is best if they are short, 3 -5 minutes at the maximum. Viewers tend to have short attention spans so you only have a few moments to captivate them. For your web video to have viral potential, it needs to have many of the following characteristics:
- provocative / shocking
- entertaining
- interesting / compelling
- unique
- funny
- clever
- memorable
- creative
A great idea is to watch other successful online videos so you can see what makes them work. There are several Viral video sites on the web which feature charts of the top weekly and monthly movers and shakers.
How do I Make a Viral Video?
First up it’s really important to get clear about your desired outcome for the video. Whenever you hop on an aeroplane, you need to know where your final destination is, or you could end up anywhere. And so it is the same when it comes to making your viral video. - Is you desired outcome to increase product sales?
- Or to bring about more brand awareness?
- Maybe you want to drive more traffic to your website?
- Or perhaps you really want to entertain people with one of your comedic talents?
Once you are clear on your outcome, you can dive into making your online video.
I have broken down the production process into 5 steps based on what it all boils down to: IDEAS.
IDEA:
The first step is to get or brainstorm a great idea that will hook the viewer. If you expand your awareness, you will see that we are surrounded by thousands of potentially brilliant ideas everyday.
DESIGN:
Once you have a solid idea, you will begin to design the structure of your video. You may like to create a script. At this step in the process you will also visualize how you want your video to look.
EXECUTE:
This is the actual production of your video when you film footage, source any media, and edit your viral video together.
ACTIVATE:
In the activation phase we begin to set things into motion by adding a wide variety of marketing and promotion techniques to your video to propel it in front of viewers.
SPREAD:
The final step is to spread your viral video over the internet by distributing it on various video sharing sites, and social media networks and blogs. This is when the video really begins to take on a life of its own.
I will soon be adding articles and video tutorials which go into greater depth on the above steps.
Take Action
 Start carrying a notebook around so you can jot down ideas on the fly. Pay attention to what is popular in the news, on tv and in magazines. We are surrounded by thousands of ideas for viral videos every day, if we just take some time to notice them. How can you put a unique spin on these ideas? If you'd like some inspiration, be sure to check out our collections of viral videos:
If you enjoyed this article, please consider recommending it to Stumbleupon or Digg so other aspiring Web Video Virtuosos may find it.  Stumble It!
Return from Producing Viral Videos to Web Video Virtuoso
|
