Most small-time active YouTube content creators dream about that one video that goes mega viral, bringing in millions of views and thousands of subscribers overnight. While that dream is a bit far-fetched for the vast majority, most still have a shot at making a video that at least goes viral enough to jumpstart their channel a bit. Here are 3 easy tricks to create a viral video!
Take Advantage Of Current Trends Before you Start to Create a Viral Video
The majority of viral videos go viral because there’s a certain theme or trend associated with the video. Of course there are the viral videos that set these trends themselves, but you’re either going to need a lot of creativity, or a lot of luck to snag one of those (this goes back to the far-fetched for the vast majority dream). However, piggybacking onto these trends with relevant keywords and social sharing is an easy way to get some quick views.
Pranks are one thing that doesn’t seem to be losing any steam as a viral trend, and to be honest, a huge majority of these videos are completely staged. If you’re up to it, creating a fake prank video (with the help of our next couple tips) is a really easy way to get a viral video. Unless you’ve got people who can act, you’ll likely get called out on it by quite a few viewers, but people will still watch.
Another example of a trend that came and left for the most part were Self-Balance Boards, also known as Hoverboards. The moment Hoverboards started becoming a thing in the summer of 2015, YouTubers everywhere including Ben Schmanke and Casey Neistat jump on the bandwagon, made videos that people about the hoverboards that people wanted to see (ie. their experience of it, riding it and where to buy it) and they gained millions of views over the course of a few weeks. People wanted to know more about this Back To The Future-like device and they showed it to them, and racked up the reward.
If you’re not sure what’s trending now, you can check out Google Trends (our favorite) to see what, where and when people are searching. You can also use Twitter Trends or this crazy tool called YouTube Trends (by YouTube). All very useful tools!
Use Magic Thumbnails
One of the oldest methods of generating views that is sure to never die is slapping an eye-catching thumbnail on the video. Now, you can take the easy route and throw an attractive female on there and call it good, but this usually won’t work if it is completely unrelated to the content (ah, who are we kidding, it always works).
Alternatively, you can use some creativity and come up with a thumbnail that is related to your video. An example would be a close-up of a boss in a video game as the thumbnail of a gameplay video of that game.
Fake It To Make It
There exisit a concept known as social proof (read more about it) that basically says we as humans look for shortcuts in our decision making and we typically take the decision of most as the best route to take. From cross the street with crowd, to liking or watching something everyone else saw as well.
This leads to the third proven method of going viral: faking it to make it. On YouTube, the more views you have, the more likely people are to watch your video. The easiest and most popular way (see there, social proof again) that people use to kickstart their views, is buying them. You can actually purchase a views, likes and subscribers from reputable providers to make your video seem more popular and attractive to potential viewers.
The downside to this is that bought views don’t directly lead to genuine viewers. So it’s important to keep in mind that buying views in this way is meant to kickstart your video and attract more viewers through other means once you have a view count Psy would be proud of.
Time to go viral
Using these three proven tactics in sync with an amazing video, you can be well on your way to get a million views and thousands of new subscribers. Now, what are you waiting for? Go on Mr / Ms Success and make your next viral video!
Date: January 3, 2016 / Categories: Tips, YouTube, / Author: Rich Drees
