The Ultimate Guide to Viral Video Success on Social Media

 

Photo Courtesy of Terje Sollie

Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram stories are some of the most effective social media platforms that are being included in every social media marketing strategies. The quest for instant stardom has become apparent not just to the millennials but to people of all ages, races, sexual preferences and backgrounds. So what does it take to post viral videos that attract millions of views in a short span of time without having to shell out unreasonable amounts of money? For those who are still waiting to make it big through posting videos on various social media platforms, here is the ultimate guide to viral video success on social media:

Give viewers value.

• When your audience watches your videos, they are giving you a valuable part of themselves which is time. Make sure to make their time worth it by delivering value through your videos. Make the first few minutes of your video highly engaging to compel them to stay long enough for you to deliver your message. Be generous in giving away important advice that can help them in life. By giving away highly important secrets and advice, you are slowly building trust and credibility as well as making new followers from a wide group of audience.

Customize your thumbnail.

• Before you create a highly compelling first few minutes for your viral video, the first thing you need to do is to compel your audience to click on your video and to start watching it. And you won’t be able to do this with a thumbnail or preview on your video that’s boring AF. So take the time to customize your thumbnail and make sure that it’s at the part of the video that will intrigue your target audience enough to click and start watching your video to get more out of it. Apart from making the thumbnail photo attention-grabbing, it will also help to pick the video thumbnail with an equally intriguing statement or question.

Know what your audience needs.

• As with any successful product or service that fulfills a need or want a customer has, your video should similarly be answering a question or providing your target audience with useful information that solves an issue they may or may not know about. Simply put, try to be as helpful as possible in providing invaluable insights that they will never find elsewhere. Refrain from presenting your product or service to them and going on incessantly about it to make them buy it. Build trust by offering free help and advice first before subtly and seamlessly introducing your product. Apart from free advice, try offering funny videos, product unboxing, and reviews, DIY tutorials, and videos that promote a cause.

SEO your video.

• Use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on your video to increase its rankings in search engines. Do this by adding keywords and phrases in the headline and description that people may use in searching for your video.

These are just basic tips for creating viral videos. To know more about maximizing the creation of videos on various specific social media platforms, read on below:

Facebook

The appeal of Facebook over millions of its users is still strong primarily because they always innovate new features to keep its users interested and excited to try these things that keep them coming back for more. Here are the latest trends to get your video noticed among thousands of other Facebook users:

• Go on live broadcasts. You might notice that lately, Facebook always sends notifications when your friends create a live video broadcast. Take advantage of this by going live on Facebook when most of your target audience is online.
• Keep your videos short or up to 1 minute only. Beyond that, the viewers usually lose interest.
• Put interesting captions to get more views.
• Add a featured video on your profile. This will attract more engagement and views.
• Abide by the 3 components of a good video: introduction, conflict, and conclusion.
• For those who are advertising, make use of sequencing ads, a type of advertising that lets you show a series of ads to your audience in your preferred order.
• Activate the autoplay feature that allows users to watch your video by featuring movement in the first few frames of your video.

Instagram

With Instagram still being the undisputed choice for posting selfies, food and vacation snaps, people flock to Instagram to check out the good life and post their own good times. Be sure to follow these strategies to maximize your Instagram exposure:

• Post Instagram stories. Just like Facebook live videos and Facebook stories, Instagram stories attract more attention from your audience simply because it’s a fairly new tool that everyone is still excited to use. Take advantage of this by making sure to post content on the Instagram that offers your audience exclusive content.
• As with Facebook, you need to keep each video short to retain the interest of your viewers. Keep the video length from 30 seconds to 1 minute.
• To boost followers to your Instagram account, create hashtags that other people can use.
• You may also create stories from Instagram photos
• Make sure that your camera phone is in portrait mode for Instagram stories.
• Add relevant and popular hashtags that people may be looking for.
• Activate the autoplay feature that allows users to watch your video by featuring movement in the first few frames of your video.

Snapchat

With lots of filters to explore, Snapchat’s fun filters make it the popular social media choice for selfies. Be one step ahead of other Snapchatters with these tips in mind:

• Create fun, colorful geofilters. If you’re launching an event or product, creating geofilters can be the best marketing tool you’ll use as it creates high amounts of engagement from users especially if the geofilter you’ll create is brilliantly designed and contained captions that can further increase the audience’s engagement and likelihood to download and use.
• Show behind-the-scenes action which always piques the curiosity of viewers
• Your Snapchat video should be 10 seconds long
• Make sure that your screen is on 18:9 aspect ratio.

Youtube

For those who are looking into creating longer videos, Youtube is the top video uploading platform for recording songs, unboxing products, video tutorials and creating special event videos. These are musts for every YouTuber hoping to increase their video’s engagement with their target market:

• Create a YouTube channel or playlist
• Interview your customers and create videos of their testimonials to your product/services
• Put the call to action (CTA) at the 30-second mark.
• Keep your videos not longer than 5 minutes short.

Twitter

If you are targetting social media users who like to keep themselves updated with the latest news and headlines, then go to Twitter to create your video. As the social media platform where you can see the most number of posts with just a few scrolls, Twitter gets approval for being quick, direct, upfront and effective. Some of the most helpful tips for aspiring Twitter viral video owners are:

• Create videos about branding
• Create a video that lasts from 30 seconds to 1 minute.
• Activate the autoplay feature that allows users to watch your video by featuring movement in the first few frames of your video.

Follow all the tips mentioned above, continue experimenting with different tools and you’ll find out that nothing is impossible when you know how to develop a marketing strategy.  Nothing beats video marketing on social media platforms. It makes the audience feel as if they are actually in the room with you – watching you live in color and in full action as you relay your message that caters to entertain almost all of their senses.