Having one of your videos go viral is something that many marketers would love to have happen. The amount of exposure that their brand gets when a video goes viral can be an impressive boon to any brand, large or small.

A post goes viral when it rapidly gets a large number of shares on social media, getting more exposure than you might expect it to. It can be any form of a post on any social network. The amount of exposure that a viral post gets is something that most brands would love to see but wanting to make a post go viral and it actually happening are two different things. So, how do you make a post go viral? Here, we will take a look at some of the common elements that go into a viral video.

Planning

When you are making a video that you want to go viral, planning is one of the most important parts of it. Winging it does not work well when you want a viral video. Start by putting together a brief of what you want to put into the video. A detailed creative strategy will help you determine what the goals are of the video — aside from going viral — the message and tone you want to include in the video, and other important details.

You know your audience, and it is essential to make sure that you keep them in mind when planning out your videos. While you want your video to go viral, you need to keep in mind that you cannot please everyone, so target your main audience.

What do you want your video to go viral for? You need to know why the video should go viral, not just that you want it to. You might be looking to increase your brand awareness or grow your online following. As with every other aspect of your marketing, identifying the goals of the campaign is one of the most important parts of the planning process. However, do not be promotional in a video; they are less likely to go viral if they are overly promotional; unless you can be humorous in your promotions, but that depends on your product, message, and audience more than anything.

Setting up the video

A viral video always starts out strong and grabs attention instantly. One way to help you do that is to include the word “you” in the first five seconds of the video. Using terms like “you” and “yours” in the first few seconds often helps get attention and keep it.

Storytelling

Telling a story is another important part of the viral video; you need to have a beginning, middle, and an end. Throwing in a plot twist or doing something unpredictable is also a good idea. It can often help you engage your audience emotionally, which is another crucial factor in the viral video.

Since you are focusing on telling a story, choose an overarching theme that is somewhat universal so it does not require explanation. There are tropes that your audience knows well that will help engage them and make the video more relatable; play into that! It gives you a good starting point to help you engage the audience quickly.

Keep it Short

No matter how compelling your video is, if you make it too long, you will not be able to hold attention to the end, which means you will not be able to go viral. Viral videos are usually no longer than one minute long. This length will allow you to create something exciting and engaging that ends before viewers begin to lose interest.

Getting your video discovered

Now that you have planned out your video and put together a fantastic strategy for shooting it, we can take a look at some ways to help your video get discovered.

Captions

Including captions in your videos will help make them more accessible for people with hearing impairments, and it allows a viewer to watch it without having to turn on the sound of their device. Many people scrolling through social media do not have the sound on, so the captions will allow them to watch the video and share it no matter where they are.

Include Interesting Copy

Even with a video, you still need to include some compelling and interesting copy with it so that it can be optimized for search engines, thus helping it get more views.

The copy will explain what the video is about and help it get the attention of viewers. Avoid the all-caps video titles that look like clickbait on social media, and spend some time writing compelling copy to increase views.

Hashtags

Hashtags are an effective strategy for helping increase a post’s reach on social media platforms, including TikTok and YouTube. You can include them in your captions or video descriptions, but make sure that you only use relevant hashtags, not ones that happen to be trending currently that are unrelated; this will make you look like clickbait.

Promote the video

In order for a  video to go viral, you need to promote it. Share it on your social media channels, include it in your email marketing. Without some self-promotion, it is not likely that the video will go viral. You worked hard on this video, be proud of it and show that pride off.

Conclusion

This formula will help you design a video that has the potential to become viral. While there are no guarantees when it comes to viral videos, this can help increase your chances of making it happen for you. Once your video goes viral, you will gain a lot more exposure for your brand, which can help your brand succeed overall. If one video does not go viral, do not be disheartened; just try again. Eventually, you will find the winning combination that sparks the mass sharing that comes with going viral. And remember, Seattle Advertising can help you with our Video Marketing services.