You often hear that making a viral video is pure luck, but that’s just not true. Most of the videos that do go viral online were created with that goal in mind. The creators have to work quickly to push the video and get as many views as possible. By following the proper steps and using the right tools, you can get your video to go viral too.

The content of your video obviously plays a major role in getting it to go viral. It has to be entertaining and something out of the ordinary- either laugh-out-loud funny, or something that will make viewers say “wow!” The video quality doesn’t necessarily have to be great as long as the content makes people want to share it with their friends. Ideally, you want your video listed on YouTube’s “Most Viewed” page, as that will make your views grow quickly.

Your video should be short, only about 30 to 60 seconds long. Anything much longer than that is hard to get people to commit. Be careful when giving your video a title because that is a major attention-getter. Sometimes you may have to use something a little misleading to get a better viewership. When you tag the video, include as many tags as you can that will help people find it if they don’t know the title. Be sure the video is embeddable so it can be posted to various websites.

Once your video is uploaded, you’ll need to get moving. Start with email, sending it to as many contacts as possible and requesting that they forward it on. Next, move on to your social networking accounts; post it on friend’s pages, group pages, and community pages, giving it as much exposure as possible. Don’t forget to post the video to forums and blogs, as well as any other appropriate sites.

One of the best ways to promote a video is to get comments on it, especially controversial comments. You can do this yourself using multiple accounts or get a friend to contribute. Most viewers will take the time to read the comments even though few will leave any. That controversy could be the element that gets people sending it to friends to view.

When posting your video on YouTube, you will have three thumbnail screenshots to choose from to post with the video. One of the three, one always comes from the middle of the video, so make sure that as you are creating the video, you have something in the middle that will make a good thumbnail. As soon as you have people sharing your video with friends and it’s getting all that exposure, it’s as good as viral.

If you liked this, try : Viral Marketing