Viral Vids

Viral videos are clips, animations, films, etc. that are spread quickly through online sharing. The majority of these videos are humorous, but really any type of video can go viral. As this article explains, there are three categories of viral videos:

1. Unintentional Viral Videos: Videos that were never intended to go viral, but due to the popular content in the video it is rapidly shared amongst individuals online.

For example: Numa Numa

2. Humorous Viral Videos: If you put a funny video online, it will spread.

For example: Charlie the Unicorn

3. Promotional Viral Videos: Videos designed to go viral with a marketing message to raise brand awareness.

For example: The Force: Volkswagen Commercial

I’m assuming that none of those example videos are new to you, that’s because they are all viral videos. It seems that if you brought up one of these videos in a conversation with someone they would have at least heard of them, if not seen them. So, what exactly is the right formula for creating a viral video? We know the three categories, but not every humorous video on the web goes viral... so what is it?

Well, according to this article there are three essential attributes to create a successful viral videos:

1. Psychological Share Motivation: You’re video needs to have some type of psychological motivation which has three categories within it:

   -Emotion:

   -Identity and Self Expression

   -Information

2. Easy Share-ability: If you have a great video but it’s complicated or confusing to share, nobody is going to share it. This isn't a huge problem due to easy sharing access on sites such as YouTube, but this is still something that needs to be considered.

3. A Data-Driven Strategy: If you’re trying to make your video go viral you need to figure out which sites generate the best sharing, which users are most likely to share, what time of day content is most often shared, etc. It is crucial to back up your video with good data information and a distribution strategy.

So, whether you are creating a video with the intent to go viral or just posting something for your friends there is always a chance that it will go viral. Moral of the story: be aware of what you’re posting on the web.