Everyone wants their video to “go viral”, but very few actually do. In fact, less than 0.001% of videos created get more than a handful of views. So how is it that some videos do go viral and get millions of views? Well we ran into just such a case study last week with one of our clients in Tofino BC.  The video below received more than 1,000,000 views in the first two weeks and it’s still going strong.

What Makes a Video Go Viral?

That’s actually a much easier question to answer than you may think. Great content! That’s it. You need an awesome wedding entrance (76,946,359 views and counting) that gives the viewer goose bumps and gets you on Oprah, or perhaps a double rainbowin your front yard (34,927,433 views and counting).

Or, you need a Humpback whale calf to breach on que 10 metres from your fishing boat (1,197,545 views and counting) as is the case here. Of course there are many good examples of videos that have gone viral that were created for that specific purpose.

One of my favourite examples is done by Blendtec. They make blenders – really good blenders that are capable of blending iPhones. They created a series of videos called “Will It Blend”, many of which have gone viral. The caveat being that the majority of these videos come with 6 figure marketing budgets.  If you don’t have a 6 figure marketing budget, read on.

So the idea is that most of the time, viral video is not planned, staged or contrived. It’s often spontaneous, authentic and live. However, that in itself is not always enough. There are ways that you can prepare and position your company to take full advantage of this opportunity if and when it presents itself.

Here’s what you need:

1. A YouTube or Vimeo account, preferrably both.
2. A well branded channel that includes a bio about the company, a link to your website and links to your social media platforms.
3. Ability to annotate the video with subtle marketing and a URL to your website.
4. Social media platforms to help promote the video and keep the buzz going. Don’t worry, you don’t have enough social Klout or influence to make the video go viral, only help it along.
5. A website to embed the video on.
6. A blog to talk about the video and promote it. You will want to do follow-up posts to talk about the video’s success as well.

Your Chances and How to Increase Them

The chances of capturing a video that will go viral are slim, but that’s what Tofino Fishing thought before their’s hit the 1,000,000 mark. It comes down to this:

• 50% ‘right place, right time’
• 25% luck, and
• 25% planning and preparation

Don’t get caught in the position of having a video hit the 900K mark before realizing you don’t have a link to your website on your YouTube channel.