Being Viral

being viralwithout feeling dirty

being viralneedle in a haystack


Well, without feeling TOO dirty...

Will It Blend is an example of truly compelling and natural viral content. Without using the tactics described by Greenberg or the BigFix, they were able to attain:•500% growth in 2007•6 million visits to website in 5 days


Marketer’s Guide to YouTube

•Videos uploaded to YouTube as of March 2008: 78.3 million Videos uploaded each day: 150,000 Avg. video length: 2mins 46.17 secondsTime it would take to view all of this: 412.3 years Avg. age of uploader: 26.57


Marketer’s Guide to YouTube

Dan Greenberg, co-founder of viral video marketing company The Comotion Group.

“Our rule of thumb is that if we don’t get a video 100,000 views, we don’t charge.”

Posts a how-to on making videos go viral. His tactics and advice include:

•Content is NOT King

•Getting onto the “Most Viewed” page

•Title Optimization

•Thumbnail Optimization

•Commenting

•Releasing all videos simultaneously

•Strategic Tagging: Leading viewers down the rabbit hole

being viralbeing viralwithout feeling dirty


What the competition does...

“Appeal to sex: if all else fails, hire the most attractive women available to be in the video.”

“We reach out to individuals who run relevant blogs and actually pay them to post our embedded videos”

“We get a few people in our office to log in throughout the day and post heated comments back and forth (you can definitely have a lot of fun with this).”

“...if someone is saying our video (or your startup) sucks, we just delete their comment. We can’t let one user’s negativity taint everyone else’s opinions.”


Tactics we already share with the competition...

Thumbnail Optimization“Two rules of thumb: the thumbnail should be clear (suggesting high video quality) and ideally it should have a face or at least a person in it.”

Title Optimization“Titles can be changed a limitless number of times, so we sometimes have a catchy (and somewhat misleading) title for the first few days, then later switch to something more relevant to the brand.”

Myspace, Facebook, Friends“Make sure everyone we know watches the video and try to get them to email it out to their friends, or at least share it on Facebook.”



Greenberg’s Comotion Group supposedly doesn’t practice all of the tactics outlined in his TechCrunch YouTube marketing tell-all:

•Paying bloggers to embed videos in their posts“we pay bloggers to embed clearly marked video ads in their sites, with no false endorsements of any kind.”

•Posting/Spamming videos on Myspace/Facebook“on Facebook, yes, I often share our clients videos with friends, but only to share the cool videos we’ve made with people who care.”



Greenberg emphasizes that his company’s core value is to produce content that is truly compelling and capable of being viral.

“In fact, most of our business consists of the creative content side of viral marketing campaigns: coming up with ideas for compelling campaigns, and shooting/editing videos. The core value we add to a viral campaign is that we come up with a concept that will truly go viral.”



Their tactics are only necessary in a world where finding relevant viral content is next to impossible. Viral content is no longer unique, competing against mainstream media, but competing against itself.

“The Wild West days of Lonely Girl and Ask A Ninja are over. You simply can’t expect to post great videos on YouTube and have them go viral on their own,”

Announced on July 4, 2008 the LonelyGirl15 series finale will air on August 1, 2008.



BixFix worked with Rassak Experience to create a viral campaign that is a mixture of good content and aggressive marketing tactics. They learned:•Don't go cheap. Going cheap can work, but it's less likely.•Be clever --- show your company's true personality.•Explore untraditional places to post your video. Invest in it like an advertisement•Don't forget to tell your salesforce about your efforts.


What role do we play?

•Creators of viral content?•YouTube voyeurs looking for the next

trend to capitalize on?•Viral content optimizers, pushing client

content to the top?•Viral media trainers, educating our

clients on how to take their own content online?

•All of the above?

Business

Being Viral