Take your video to a YouTube sensation with these tips!

You see it plastered over social media and news stations, not only across the country but, around the world, “Video goes viral!” Every videographer dreams and wishes that their work will go viral, that they will shoot something that catches the right person and speaks to them that it spreads like wildfire over the Internet.

A viral video is a video that is passed along from person to person via the web or different social media channels. Most viral videos contain humor and fall into three broad categories:

• Unintentional Viral Videos: Videos that the creators never intended to go viral. These videos may have been posted by the creator or shared with friends, who then spread the content.
• Humorous Viral Videos: Videos that have been created specifically to entertain people. If a video is funny enough, it will spread.
• Promotional Viral videos: Videos that are designed to go viral with a marketing message to raise brand awareness. Promotional viral videos fall under viral marketing practices.

A viral video is not only a great way to bring attention to your business but to show off your video-creating talents. Yes, we recognize that it is almost impossible to predict what will go viral, we have seen a pattern and there are certain things that you can include in your videos to increase the odds that you’ll have a smash Internet hit on your hands.

Your Video has to evoke emotion: These videos need a purpose and they need to pull something out of the person watching them. If they don’t it will just be another Facebook video that they watched and forgot about! When we feel the same emotion as what the video portrays, we feel the urge to share it to others and say, “Yes, this is how angry/sad/happy I am”. It’s also why heartbroken people tend to share tragic love songs on their Facebook wall. Whatever the emotion; awesome, sad, controversial, or educational in some cases all of these evoke some sort of emotion, and this starts the path to becoming viral. If a picture is worth a thousand words, imagine how many words is a video worth?

It should portray your brands image but not be to promotional: If a video is successful, it is more likely then not to be the first time many viewers hear about your company, especially if you are a start-up business. It’s for this reason that your video needs to build a strong personality for your brand’s without giving the ‘hard sell’ and being to pushy.

Your video should have a point of action: Putting some form of ‘Call to Action’ will encourage people to share the video. It doesn’t have to be a full force, direct call to action. In fact, a subtle call to action works better in some circumstances because it makes us think that we have the freedom to choose to share or not. The simplest call to action may also include clicking on a link to a website to check out what message the video is promoting. Remember, that if your video is impactful enough to viewers, they will naturally want to spread it to their friends without being asked to.