How to make a viral ‘go viral’ – 8 key rules

Ever wandered what makes a viral ‘viral’?

Well, start by taking a look at the best virals on the web and they have a number of things in common. FACT: The best virals normally just happen and are not planned and also resonate with your target audience.

The list below highlights 8 key things that have attributed to the success of a winning viral:

1 – Get your market right. It’s obvious, but don’t go promoting a viral about politics to a youth audience. Understand their sociological and behavioural patterns and keep it to their taste!

2 – Don’t try too hard. There’s nothing worse than forced humour… it’s real ugly! Don’t try to ‘get down with the kids’ if your brand really isn’t, it could actually harm your brand. That means NO cheesy lines… just keep it clever!

3 – Plan your seeding. Do you know which blogs and sites your demographic frequent? If not, then get a grip man! It’s critically important to encourage these sites to showcase your video… bloggers especially can either make or break a viral. Remember to give 24 hr exclusives to the top 2-3 sites if possible.

4 – Get cheeky. If you play it to safe it’s likely your viral will be thought of as a corporate video… deeming it almost impossible to seed and go viral. Learn to take the pi$$ out of yourself or show a cheeky side to the brand. Make the reader cringe or throw a smile at least.

5 – Take the laughter test. Play your viral to a team of random strangers who fit your demographic and ask them to give you feedback. If they fall about laughing (for the right reasons) then you know you’re on for a great campaign.

6 – Upload your viral to multiple channels. It’s not just about YouTube you know, there’s lots of variations to the web video channel in fact and some bloggers prefer to stream video from anywhere apart from YouTube, because the film quality is often low. Try uploading to Metacafe and Vimeo as well as YouTube. Alternatively upload it to TubeMogul.com – these guys then disperse it for you!

7 – It’s not a sales tool. Remember that your viral is there to raise awareness and create an opinion of your brand… it’s not there to make a sale so stay well away from ‘the sell’ because you’ll only limit the chance of success if you do.

8 – Have an open mind. Most of the best virals are not planned, they normally happen when you are delivering something for a client that goes wrong… or right, depends how you look at it. Keep delivering quality for your client and if something pops up with viral qualities… make the most of it!