Formula for Creating a Viral Video

Creating a great video is only half the task, ensuring it goes viral is equally important

Creating an interesting video, that you hope will go viral, is probably as difficult as trying to predict a Bollywood hit. However, like the producers who have a de-risking formula, these are a few things you can do to ensure your video gets some visibility. Of course, if it is picked up by the community...you too can rake in the big bucks.


Pre-launch: It would be good to being pre-launch activities as early as possible. Three months is the minimum time you need to build up your audience. Pre-launch activities include setting up a:

• Facebook Fan Page: This should ideally be around a theme. For example, if you plan to a product related to food, the fan page should be on an aspect of food that closely matches with your product...healthy living and eating etc. Initially you could use this page to link back to other posts or relevant third-party information.
• Twitter ID: As with the Fan Page use the twitter id to build up a following. You could also use the followers you build up as sounding boards for your campaign. In case of a product you have a ready-made audience for product trials.
• Blog: Relevant only if you have a lot of information to convey. Otherwise keep it short and simple with the Fanpage and the ID. If however, you feel the need for a blog, you need to post links back to the Facebook Fanpage and the twitter ID. It would also help to syndicate your posts in relevant forums. This will ensure traffic builds up for the blog. Be warned, however, this is time consuming and unless you are willing to splurge on marketing dollars it takes time to build decent traffic to a blog.

Video Basics: Some basic rules that I have picked up from the top video virals. Excellent examples of these include the Coke happiness machine campaign and the Virgin mobile IPL 3 campaign.

• Product Ads seldom go viral: Simplistic ads extolling the virtues of your product are almost never going to make it to the viral list. 
• Humor and feel-good: Two great emotions for a viral video. If you can associate your product with a cause and build humor into it as well, you're almost there.
•  Short is good: While you can technically do a video up to 10 mins or more (youtube has a limit of 2GB for video files), it is best to stick your video in the 60-90 sec time slot. That is the optimum viewing time for online videos. Also given our slow bandwidths this length is ideal.
• HD only if you have to: HD is a bandwidth hog. So make an HD video only if there is a real benefit from the better video definition. 
• Post only on youtube: Youtube gives you all sorts of options to embed or share the video. Best is to post it once on youtube and embed and share it across your network. This ensures that every view on any platform counts as view on youtube, thereby building it up as a most popular video.

Launch: For the video to go viral it needs to be circulated as widely as possible. The idea is that it should make it to the most popular video lists. That is when it is picked up and goes viral. Some things you can do to push it include:

• Post Video Link: On your Facebook fanpage, twitter ID and all other social media sources you might have developed during the pre-launch stage.
• Circulate: To bloggers, press release forums and publications that are relevant to the video and the product. The key to a successful viral is the views it gets. If it makes it to the Most Popular category on youtube, your job is done.
• Participate: In relevant forums, Facebook pages and communities. You will find it easier to push your video through them.

Post launch: If like the other 99%, your video is not picked up as a viral, it helps to keep the conversation going. One example of a video that did not make viral but had a successful post launch strategy is the Maruti Suzuki Estillo campaign. While the videos generated less than a thousand views till date, the marketing team have kept the interest going on their fan page through simple yet interesting contests related to their core campaign. While this might not help the video itself, Maruti has ensured a strong fan presence that they can capitalize on.

Finally it is the choice of the audience that enables a video to go viral. So spend as much time storyboarding as you can. It will help you more than anything else mentioned here.

PS: For those who need statistics to understand why video virals are such a big deal, read this