Viral Video Marketing: 23 tips

I’ve been doing a little viral video marketing research today, as TruthTest.org is soon to launch some videos to help spread the Truth or Deception pamphlet and Truth Test concept.

So without further ado, here are the 23 viral marketing tips I’ve collated. 

Video Creation

1. Ensure you identify the objective and target group of the video - these should drive the content and the publishing tactics.
2. Create videos that are entertaining, informative, polemic, shocking, controversial, timely or original. Great content does not ensure a video goes viral but it obviously helps.
3. Encourage viewers to engage with or spread the video message by asking a question at the end of the video. ie We think we’re on to something? What do you think?
4. Encourage viewers to spread the video at the start and end of the video with simple slides including your website name, url and a simple message

Video Publishing/Promotion

1. Consider using TubeMogul for wider distribution rather than just YouTube.
2. Ensure the title and description of the distributed video are keyword optimized.
3. Optimize the YouTube thumbnail of the video (three choices, one of which is the middle frame).
4. Publish the video on your own website and search engine optimize the page on which it appears.
5. Write a comment on the places where the video is published, invite viewers to comment themselves. Again asking a question is a good strategy.
6. Respond to comments wherever the video is published. Ask questions and promote engagement.
7. Send an email to internal/external stakeholders informing them of the video. Ask them to forward the email to people they think would be interested.
8. Encourage social media friends to watch and disperse the video.
9. Allow viewers to easily cut and paste video code into their website, blogg, forum etc
10. Allow users to send the video to friends via email
11. Allow users to subscribe to videos or more content via RSS or email.
12. Reach out to bloggers, forums, groups etc who could be interested in the video.
13. Post video on Facebook Video with a link back to the YouTube video and the website
14. Create a Facebook event for when the video is released.
15. Upload multiple videos at the same time, rather than spreading the release - this provides more content for people that are interested just then.
16. Consider using unique tags in YouTube tagging to ensure only your other videos are shown in Related Videos. Add more generic tags after a week or so.

Video Metrics/Tracking

1. Define the key metrics that you will track.
2. Metrics can be pulled from website analytics, TubeMogul analytics, YouTube statistics, email marketing statistics etc
3. Add ?video=1 to your submitted video URLs to better track inbound links in Google Analytics

We’ll be putting some if not all of these in action to promote Truth Test, I’ll let you know how we get on.

If you have any more tips, or have anything to say about those above, please don’t hesitate to add a comment to this post - I’d love to hear from you.