How Video Goes Viral

WebVideoZone today posted a blog about how their short vacation movie clip became one of the featured videos on Yahoo! Video’s homepage. Called “Twisty Boy,” the video about a street performer was created with nothing more than a simple point-and-shoot Canon Powershot A630 digital camera and basic editing tools through the video-sharing site. WebVideoZone bought the TwistyBoy.com domain name to guarantee the rights. So how does a basic vacation video become a viral sensation? 

 

CoMotion Group’s CEO Dan Ackerman Greenberg, 22, said that viral videos are no accident, according to an interview with CNN. Users have the power to make video go viral by matching good content and pushing it forward through social media optimization. Video only became a household commodity in the last two or three years, according to Greenberg, but there is an entire industry of corporate strategic marketing like CoMotion Group, GoViral, and ViralTracker to push video content forward.  If there is one thing that reality shows have taught us is that voting is vital, a democratic way to control content with sites such as Digg and Reddit.

 

Here are some tips by Greenberg and CNN on how to propel video into viral territory:

1. Keep the video short.

2. Design the video for remixing like “The Dramatic Hamster” to allow other viewers to customize it.

3. Don’t make the video an outright ad.

4. Make it shocking.

5. Share the video via social networks like MySpace and Facebook and through e-mail lists.