Every business that is involved with social media marketing dreams of creating a YouTube video that reaches a million viewers within a few hours. While that sounds unrealistic, it happens quite often and many times those videos are uploaded by regular people, not social media marketing gurus. Consider the man who shot his daughters laptop. He was an instant sensation, the news stations were calling him and if he had any type of product, it would have sold like hotcakes just because people were so interesting in trying to get to know him better. The video brought a lot of debate and criticism too. It wasn’t safe, it wasn’t about selling anything. If you could corner a piece of the activity that just that one man received, your business could get in trouble from having too much business too quickly. Although that can be a pretty good problem to have if you are good at handling customer service situations.
Another interesting fact about the most viral YouTube videos is many of them are done from a camera phone or web cam. People care less about, smooth, high quality and more about engagement qualities. The most engaging content is graphic, controversial, devastating or humorous. Obviously as a business you have to keep your business image in mind when you upload videos, but if you are creative you might come up with something that will contain the most engaging elements and also retain respect for your business professionalism. One way to do that is through volunteer work. If you or your staff are on hand to help clean up after a natural disaster or have some other human interest story that can tie back to your staff, products or services, you could have a viral video to market.
Another important thing about heading for the viral market is to keep your YouTube video short. In fact the most popular ones seem to be under two minutes in length. And, you certainly don’t want to go over four. For one reason people are hesitant to share longer videos with their social media networks, and for another, you risk losing the audience’s attention. Save longer videos for “How to” or review videos about your products or services.
While only a small percentage of YouTube videos that get uploaded go viral, there is no reason you can’t put your business into the percent. Take some time reviewing the most watched videos and see how you can replicate the elements into a video for your YouTube subscribers to share with their friends. Even if you don’t reach a million viewers in one day, you could reach enough over time to make your return on investment well worth it.
