SXSW: How To Create A Viral Video
If there were one message from today’s SXSW panel How To Create A Viral Video, it would be that it’s all about the content.
Jonathan Wells from Flux moderated the discussion and was joined by Margaret Gould Stewart of YouTube, Jason Wishnow of Ted, and Damian Kulash of the band OK Go.
The panel began by breaking down viral video into two groups. One is where the video is viral by accident. The creator was in the right place at the right time and caught something extraordinary. These folks aren’t likely to go “viral” again. The second category is much broader and the creators are people who made the viral video on purpose and will make more.
The question is what can you do to make sure your content is seen by lots of people over and over. The answer is it’s all about the content. It’s also about creating content for your audience and making sure the production value is where it needs to be. For Wishnow’s Ted audience, it’s important for the videos to look amazing, which explains their multiple camera angles, hi-def shooting and tight camera angles. For Kulash and OK Go, the production quality should be on the lower end. “If my videos looked good, people wouldn’t watch them,” Kulash said.
Kulash of course can prove that this type of content and production is effective. The first video OK Go posted was their Backyard Dance Video, which obtained more than 300,000 views in its first month–more records than the band had sold at the time. Fast forward from that first video to their many others, including the well known Treadmill Dancing videoand their most recent, which was sponsored by State Farm.
The State Farm sponsorship of the video is an interesting story from the band as well. Kulash explained that State Farm initially wanted to run the video exclusively on their website, something the band didn’t agree to. “Exclusivity online just doesn’t work,” Kulash said. That can work in the real world but online, “the point of something spreading is that it’s supposed to spread. You can’t just drive traffic to one place. Only our diehard fans would have gone to State Farm’s site.”
The band did agree to put State Farm in the video but made sure the brand was part of the story. A State Farm branded truck gets the action started in the video, which works since State Farm’s dollars made the video happen. The band also gives them a thanks at the very end of the video. Was it worth it for State Farm? I’d imagine so. Kulash said people tend to watch the video four to five times as opposed to just once.
So then, what about video content for non-music videos? Positive content works well. Negative or depressing content doesn’t get spread, according to Gould Stewart. Content that has an element of surprise also tends to be successful, like this Rammstein vs. Cookie Monster video:
Other tactics include focusing on your audience and interacting with them, allowing your videos to be embedded, distributing them on multiple platforms and tweaking your metadata. “It’s so frustrating when you see great content with crappy metadata,” Gould Stewart said.
If all else fails, include kittens in your video to make it go viral.
