Let's make a viral video!

It seems that all anyone wants when they post a video on the internet is for that video to go viral. What most people don’t know is that making something go viral doesn’t always just happen by accident. In fact, most, if not all, of the viral videos that are produced by major organizations are specifically tailored to go viral.

Yes, it’s true that sometimes a video does go viral by accident. Take for instance the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge videos. This is a slightly different case in the sense that it is not one particular video that went viral, but instead a whole slew of videos with similar content that went viral. According to the ALS Association, the charity responsible for taking in the donations from the challenge, it did not foresee the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge to become nearly as successful as it was.

In other cases, however, a company puts in months and months of effort into a video in the hopes that it will go viral. One example of this is the Dove Real Beauty Sketches video, which went viral in 2013. Just in case you are not familiar with the video, which has over 64 million views on YouTube, I’ll provide a brief summary.

In the video, several women describe themselves to a forensic sketch artist who cannot see his subjects. The same women are then described by strangers whom they met the previous day. The sketches are compared, with the stranger's image invariably being both more flattering and more accurate. The differences create strong emotional reactions when shown to the women. The overall goal is to show women that they are more beautiful than they think they are by comparing self-descriptions to those of strangers.

Now, what do the Dove Real Beauty Sketches video and the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge videos have in common? Both videos contain engaging content. The first step in producing a viral video, is great content. Without good content, no one is going to want to watch that video, right?

The second thing that these videos have in common is that they were performed/shared on social media by key influencers, such as celebrities. In order for a video to go viral, it must be easily shareable, or else people will have trouble showing the video to their friends and family.

In addition to the good content and shareability of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge videos, the challenge had a little bit of luck on its side. Sometimes, good timing can be a key factor in whether or not a video will go viral, but the Dove Real Beauty Sketches creators took the content and shareability of the video to a social video marketing agency.

You might ask, “What is a social video marketing agency,” and that’s the same question I had when I first heard of it. After doing some research on the company that Dove used, Unruly, I was truly amazed at the existence of such a company. Essentially, Dove paid Unruly to place the video on major outlets, as well as several forms of social media platforms. So whenever you scroll down your Facebook feed and see “sponsored post,” that’s exactly what Unruly did for Dove. It’s a new form of advertising, and sometimes it doesn’t work, but in the case of Dove it worked out fantastically.