Tips for Making a Viral Video

Making a Viral Video, Tip 1

Put your viral video everywhere. You should post it on every video sharing site you can find. Services like TubeMogul make this easier by letting you upload your video once and then distributing it for you.

Making a Viral Video, Tip 2:

Promote your viral video. Email the link to your mom, your cousin, your high school class. Make it easy for everyone to then forward the video to all of their friends.

Making a Viral Video, Tip 3:

Keep your viral video short. You want this video to be watched as many times as possible, and that’s more likely to happen if people can watch the video quickly. Thirty to sixty seconds is generally a good length for a viral video.

Making a Viral Video, Tip 4:

Make your viral video funny. Humor can be hard to get right, sometimes, but it’s the surest way to make people want to share your video. Think about all of the viral videos that you’ve seen—most of them have been comedies.

Making a Viral Video, Tip 5:

Don’t make your viral video an advertisement. Some companies have successfully used viral video to promote a product, but “going viral” is usually a spontaneous byproduct of a great video, not an intentional goal.

Making a Viral Video, Tip 6:

Content beats quality in a viral video. Most successful viral videos are made by amateurs, so good content is more important than high production quality. If viewers enjoy what they see, they’ll overlook a shaky camera or focus troubles.

Making a Viral Video, Tip 7:

Don’t use copyrighted content in your viral video. If you hope to have your viral video seen by thousands of people, make sure you’re not using any unlicensed music or images that could get you in trouble with record companies, television networks and their lawyers.

Making a Viral Video, Tip 8:

Keep trying to make viral videos. Often, it’s completely random videos that go viral, and no one can predict with much accuracy what is going to catch on and become a big hit.