This post is the third in a series of four about viral video marketing. The first post, Viral Video Marketing - Creating a Strategy, covered the necessary steps needed to create a viral video strategy. The second post Viral Video Marketing - Creating the content, reviewed the emotional appeal of video, the types of videos you can create, and other considerations of video production. The final post will cover measurement insights that we have either learned through practice, or are widely recognized as best practices.

A video will go viral if the number of people that share it is greater than the number of people that initially viewed it. For this to happen, two things need to be true:

1. The content should be share-worthy: viewers must feel compelled to share the content with their friends and colleagues.  
2. The video needs to be viewed in the proper channels: share-worthy content will not go viral unless it is broadcasted on a platform where influencers can view it. 

The last blog post discussed important things to consider when creating viral content. The first blog post briefly discussed the groundwork necessary to properly land content, but didn't go into too much detail.

How to Identify Channels and Influencers 

Develop a persona for your ideal viewers. Knowing who you are targeting will help you identify the proper influencers (those that will actually share your content) across channels.  

Set up a system to listen to the web. There are many tools that are designed to help you understand where people are discussing topics related to your brand online. Through keyword monitoring, you will be able to indentify the individuals who are most active in the conversations regarding your brand. This by no means is a comprehensive list, but it is a good start. 

1. The first step is setting up a central hub where all your pre-defined keyword mentions are aggregated. Google Reader is easy to use for this. Once you define your keywords in the search engines below you can subscribe to their RSS feeds which will automatically send search results to your central hub. 
2. Use Google Alerts to track mentions of your product/service, brand, competitors brand, and other keywords across the web. 
3. Twitter's search function is also an easy way to track mentions across twitter. Evaluate the users discussing your brand and start engaging with them before your content launches. It can also be helpful to search within user profiles to find demographics and social groups that fit within your target market. FollowWonk allows you to search within Twitter bios. 
4. If your industry or product is commonly discussed on message boards, Boardtracker is a useful tool to find keywords in forum threads. 
5. Sites like Technorati and BlogPulse tracks buzz and searches for trends that pertain to your company.

Engage with influencers prior to launching content. Once you have identified the top percentage of individuals who influence the social communities important to your brand, the next step involves active engagement. A basic rule to understand about the majority of influencers is that most are motivated by fame. Calling out top influencers or giving them a thumbs up publicly on social media sites will further deepen the relationship you are cultivating with them. Portraying transparency and authenticity through your social media communication is key to building trust with your influencers.  

Push your content out once it launches. Bloggers and social media writers crave content. Since we have already taken the time to develop relationships with influencers, the possibiliy of getting a repost or mention when we send these individuals your video is much higher. Think of it as a warm lead as opposed to a cold call. In addition to directly seeding the video with influencers, post the video on bookmarking sites like Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon; multi-media sites like TubeMogul which pushes content out to all the mainstream video sharing sites; and traditional social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.  

Other things to keep in mind. If something with the launch goes haywire there are five keys to resolving any crisis that may arrive

1. Respond with lightning-speed 
2. Provide hyper-transparency 
3. Get ready for a two-way dialogue 
4. Understand that reputations are built and broken in search (very difficult to dislodge content once it is in search results) 
5. Don't underestimate the power of your detractors (everyone has the resources to be an influencer in their social circle. Don't blow anyone off.)

This post is the second in a series of four about viral video marketing. The first post, Viral Video Marketing - Creating a Strategy, covered the necessary steps needed to create a viral video strategy. The next posts will cover implementation and measurement insights that we have either learned through practice, or are widely recognized as best practices.

Once a strategy is in place and accepted by the necessary stakeholders, the next step is to determine the approach and create the content. Creative content is critical to viral success - people do not share or engage with mediocre content. Videos typically go viral when they appeal to a person's emotions - these emotions could include joy, sadness, delight, surprise, etc. Just make sure there is a clear emotional appeal, and that these emotions are inline with your brand.

Understand the Keys to Success

After you define your emotional appeal, understand how other companies have achieved success using these emotions. Visible Measures, ReelSEO, and Mashable Video all have regular features about viral videos. You can also check out the Category section on YouTube. Try to notice common themes among the top featured videos. For example, I've noticed that some viral vlogs incorporate comments from viewers into future vlogs. Doing this builds audience engagement and active viewers, and active viewers will send videos along to their friends.

Writing Content

The next step is to start concepting. Of course, we'd recommend partnering with an experienced viral video production agency to develop concepts, but here are a few ideas to get you started if you plan to make a humorous viral video:

1. Parody: Is there a video that is really hot right now? Create a parody to try to build off their fame. The key to a successful parody is speed and quality. You'll need to produce this quickly - the original video still needs to be popular for a parody to take off. It should also be as funny or funnier than the original. If the humor quality isn't up to snuff, then the video will fall flat and may even tarnish your brand. 
2. Stunt: A stunt video shows some kind of newsworthy or novel action, typically featuring your product. The most successful example of this is Blendtec's "Will it Blend" videos. The key to their continued success is that they are blending newsworthy objects - whenever a new iPhone comes out, Blendtec is quick to blend one.  
3. Prank: A viral video that shows a prank needs to be hilarious to go viral. The other side of the coin is the shock video - this is when a prank or a stunt goes horribly wrong, so much that the audience is shocked.  
4. Celebrity: If you are lucky enough to have celebrity friends that will endorse your product, you'll have a quick way to get views. Celebrities already have a fan base, so appealing to that base could help your views and viral potential. 
5. Original story: This is the most ambitious of the above approaches, since you will likely need to partner with an agency or scriptwriter and hire actors. Think about this approach as making a mini-film or broadcast commercial. But with the added investment, could come a huge payoff. 

Other Considerations

1. Will you need to hire talent? 
2. Where will the video be shot? Do you need to secure a location or a studio? 
3. Will there be one video or a series of videos?  
4. Is it all live action? Or will you need animation as well? Or is it all animation? 
5. What equipment will you need? 
6. Are there other licensing considerations? 

Creative content is the first part of the puzzle. The next blog in this series will cover the second part - landing the content for viral success.

This post is the first in a series of four about viral video marketing. We'll discuss strategy, content, and implementation insights that we have either learned through practice, or are widely recognized as best practices.

Every viral video campaign should begin not with the content, but with a strategy. The best content could fall flat if it isn't inline with the greater marketing strategy and company goals. Viral video marketing strategy should include measurable goals, defined integration to a company's overall marketing strategy, and a strategy to land the content with your audience.

Define Goals

Strategy begins with goals - typical goals used to be to drive traffic to a website with the purpose of making a sale or some other kind of conversion. With more sophisticated tools and analytics, goals can also include awareness, sentiment, or engagement shifts.

1. Awareness: You have a new product and would like to create some awareness. Your goal is to get as much exposure as possible in your target audience, and probably to dive traffic back to a website to find out more information.
2. Sentiment: You have a product that exists in a competitive marketplace. Your goal is to change the sentiment around your product in your target audience.
3. Engagement: You'd like users to become more engaged with your product or brand. Your goal is to use video to elicit a call to action for your users to create their own content around your product, submit to a contest, or perform another action that requires engagement with your company (not necessarily a purchase though).

Integrate with Greater Marketing/PR Strategy

Video should raise some questions - after all, you do want your audience to be intrigued/amused/delighted enough to perform another action after viewing the video. However, your video content should not be so disconnected that you leave your viewers confused. Before creating any content, make sure you communicate with marketing and PR to understand what your key company messages are, who your audience is, and what their goals are. Your video should fit in somewhere in this overall strategy.

Identify Channels to Land the Content

A video will likely not go viral unless you understand the mindset of your core demographic and there is a strategy in place before production to land the content. First, identify the channels your company currently engages in. If your audience is engaging somewhere else, you need to start building trust in those channels. During the strategy phase, identify who the key influencers are in each channel, and if possible, understand what their preferences are. If your content appeals to them, chances are it will receive their endorsement and appeal to their audience.

We recommend writing a clear strategy document, and having this document approved by the marketing team. If the strategy is in place and agreed upon, then the content creation and implementation processes will go much smoother down the road.