One year back, I started writing stories about my startup journey and readers started loving my articles. I did not want to limit my content marketing to blogs and articles so I started learning video marketing.
The principles of viral content marketing works in viral videos, after all videos are a powerful form of content.
You will be surprised to know that the work of making a viral video starts even before publishing. It is not just the video that becomes viral, it’s your planning & hard work behind each video that makes it viral.
Let me share some of insights that I gained after working with video making platform for startups – Stagephod.
A strong title that encourage people to open video
No one will open your video if you have written a generic title. Make it specific to your audience so that they can connect with it. Try to solve their problem. Write actionable title. Write result oriented title. Tell them what will happen as outcome after watching the video.
Pro Tip for Startups: Find your best article, make a video on same topic and use same title.
Image or Snapshot
An interesting title and image are the only two things that will determine whether the user will click on play button or not.
Take best snapshot from your video that can spark curiosity in user. You can also customize external image to convey the right message. The chances of getting the video clicked increase significantly with an image of celebrity whom people love like crazy (like Rajnikant & Sachin Tendulkar).
Pro Tip for Startups: Find what kind of images are getting most clicks on your social media. Use similar photo as preview image of your video
Supporting Text & Keywords
Not so relevant for Facebook videos but a game changer for youtube videos.
How people are going to find your video in their youtube search? You have to write something relevant and interesting in video description. Youtube algorithm can not watch your video, your text description will tell algorithm when to show your video in search results.
Write a long description including all the keywords that a user might search.
Pro Tip for Startups: Check your google analytics and find your profitable keywords. Make videos on same topic and it will bounce your customer conversion rate.
Check if your video has viral emotions
The first step is getting user click the video and second step is getting him hit the share button.
Have you ever wonder why videos get shared? All viral videos have communicated a certain emotion. I call it a viral emotion.
Emotions like excitement, love, empathy, anger, frustration are spread like a fire in jungle, while sad, grief and boredom emotions are not viral.
Your video must strongly convey at least one viral emotion.
Pro Tip for Startups: Analyse videos of your competitors and you will get good idea about the viral emotions in your industry.
Connect with a story
To make an emotional video you have to connect your video concept with a story.
People love to listen stories. We are spreading stories from thousands years old cave walls to modern Facebook wall.
Our epics like Ramayana & Mahabharat are stories that we never tired listening, watching and passing on to our next generation.
You video should be a short version of a great epic.
Pro Tip for Startups: Hire a storyteller if you don’t have. Outsource storytelling work to freelancer, if you can’t hire.
Cut your video short
Unfortunately, people don’t have hours to watch your videos. Ideal length of viral video is 30 second to 1:59 minutes. There are some exceptions where longer videos became viral.
Sticking with short videos give you more bandwidth to experiment with more videos while not compromising with the impact of virality.
If your video is longer than 2 minutes, make it into 1 minute and some seconds.
Pro Tip for Startups: It’s not a strict rule. Experiment with couple of videos of varied length to check what your customers love – long or short videos.
Get feedback from experts
Don’t just publish, ask feedback from content marketers once your video work is done. It is best to seek guidance before you publish the video. After taking feedback, ask the experts if they would like to share the video on their social channels.
Make sure you don’t waste time of experts until you are convinced that your video looks awesome.
