What is viral video?
You have no doubt heard the term “Viral video” mentioned in the media and around the office. Like many terms involving the internet it’s a buzzword that is gaining popularity. If you want to know what “Viral Video” is, this article will explain the phenomenon and more importantly how it can help you and your business.
Viral Video is a video or multimedia clip that spreads throughout the web/internet universe like a virus. It is passed on through e-mail, blogs, news articles, websites etc. As more and more people see and like the video, they think their friends should see it too; it’s the classic scenario, “he tells two friends, and each of his friends tells two friends…” so on and so until potentially millions have people have seen the video.
Now of course, not every video is going to have this mass appeal. While some people will sit and watch everything that comes into their in-box, not everyone is going to forward it along to friends, family or co-workers. This is the key distinction and this is the difference between producing a video that your friends and family will stomach because they love you and what complete strangers will admire so much that they will pass it along.
How does this affect you and your business? While many viral videos can be stupid pet tricks, or goofy moments with the kids many of the best and most popular viral videos are business advertisements or commercials
This can be the most effective form of free advertising available in the world. E-mail spans borders and language is seldom a barrier for quality material. For example a few months ago you heard about Susan Boyle and her performance of “I Dreamed a Dream” on the “Britain’s Got Talent” show.
It wasn’t her incredible performance on the show that got the attention. CNN and other international news organizations weren’t concerned about her song. What they reported on were the number of hits to the YouTube website. Within 24 hours of her performance there were more than 10 million hits on the clip, and as of today it’s over 76 million, and close to 100 million if you include all of the different versions of it available.
Susan Boyle is now a VERY famous person and Britain’s Got Talent, a show no one outside of the UK had heard of, is now a show with a global reputation.
So what can you do to create a video that will help promote your business?
Well, there are a few things that get people’s attention:
1. Emotional Impact –Pulling on the viewers’ heart strings or tickling their funny bones is the best way to draw interest from people. If there is some sort of heartwarming story or a funny commercial with a brilliant punch line – people will respond to that and want to share the experience with other people.
2. Unique Product or Service Offering – if you business is so unique that they just have to tell their friends about it, this is another way to get the word spread. Having a link to your website or linking the video from YouTube to your website are great ways to drive traffic to your site even if you don’t have the most entertaining commercial.
3. Quality – whether you have a good idea for a commercial or not, if you shoot it with your home video camera that is going to say something about your business and your product. It’s one thing if the content of the commercial requires it to look grainy or for the production values to be low, but even then there is a big difference in the look and feel compared to a professional production. Again, the relatively low cost to the produce the video and the multiple locations it can be posted and spread make it more than a worthy investment.
4. Ease of Distribution – make it easy to find, make it small enough to distribute and label the video properly. If you make the URL or link easy to remember, the video will be that much easier to find if an e-mail or a link is lost. If your video makes the rounds as a WMV (Windows Media File) or an MOV file, make it small enough (less than 5MB) that it can be easily distributed through e-mail without clogging up inboxes. If your video is posted on YouTube or a similar site make sure that the keyword search is clear and obvious. Because not only do want people to be able to search for it, but if you have a funny pet food commercial and someone else is looking up pet food they may come across your video by accident. And for every person that see it, there is the potential for it to spread.
If you have a great idea to advertise your business or need a great idea, Spectra Media has everything in place to script, storyboard and start spreading your video around the world like a virus.
Video and Multimedia Producer