Many amateur video makers’ goal is to create a viral video to promote themselves or their small business. Whether you are making a NASA or COVID-19 themed video, there are a few rules that it must follow to go viral. These are what separates a promotional ad and a viral video. It is quite common not to understand the difference.
Unfortunately, there is no set formula you can follow to create viral videos. If there was, every producer would be making them. Instead, take risks as an amateur video maker. Focus on following the rules to avoid failure. Here are a few rules to successfully create a viral video.
It Must Evoke Emotion
The most important thing you can do when creating a viral video is a play on people’s emotions. Everyone who uses the internet will have seen a viral video at some point. Stop and think about videos you’ve seen. Then, think about why they were shared. You probably expect that most videos are shared because they are funny. After all, everyone wants a good laugh. However, the most common reason people share a video is that it is controversial, sad, or educational. All of these traits evoke emotion in people. If your friend tells you something that evokes emotion, you feel like you have to tell everyone. This is the process that makes videos go viral.
Portray Your Brand Image, but Don’t Be Promotional
If you make a successful viral video, it will likely expose people to your brand for the first time. Therefore, you need to set your brand image as your number one priority. This gets your brand image out to the public. Be clever about this. Highlight you or your business and make that the focus. Also, try to appeal to your target audience as much as possible. You may think that these are all promotional tactics. However, the key is to make a video more about sharing information than promoting a hard sell.
Other Branding and Marketing Efforts Must Be in Place
Ultimately, your video will not be successful if you don’t have other marketing strategies in place, even if you upload it to a content-sharing site, such as Jukin Media, and it makes it to the big screen. For instance, if you make a viral video and direct thousands to your website, you won’t see any benefits if your content is out of date. Therefore, you need to make sure your other marketing efforts are in place. Your video will attract people to your brand, and you need to have other measures in place to make them perform the desired actions.
There are a few rules you must follow to create a viral video. Following this can help you make a video that attracts thousands of people. Keeping them is contingent on you having other methods in place to retain these new visitors. If you take the proper steps during video creation, you can bring thousands of subscribers to your brand.