What I Learned About Viral Videos

(From someone who’s video didn't go viral)

THE IDEA

I became laid off after doing telephone tech support after almost 13 years.  I decided to take this as an opportunity to try something different, something that I could use my writing passion with.  It was a difficult and fruitless search and then I read an article about a guy who turned his resume into a mock Amazon product page listing.  It was a clever idea that went viral and lead to some job interviews.  I decided I could do something similar “outside-the-box” and came up with the idea of a movie trailer resume.  Thus, “Unemployed ManMakes His Resume Into A Movie Trailer,” was born.

I’ve been working on writing and video productions on the side for many years and I knew I could pull it off.  It’s also something I hadn't heard of before, so I thought this unique idea could gain some traction.  I ran it by a friend who used to work as an HR manager and now runs a resume creation service (called 5280 Resumes).  She thought it was a great idea too.

I got to work on the script, trying to balance out the resume details that needed to go in it with some interesting scenes that I could actually shoot.

MARKETING

But having the video was only half the battle; I needed it to go viral so I could be noticed by as many potential employers as possible.  I came across this article, “How To Approach The Creation of Viral Marketing Content,” by Hartley Brody from the HubSpot website.  He explained that marketing was key and 75-80% of views are in the first 3-5 days.  It needed to be pushed out to a large audience all at once.

I began to research different social media sites to see what I could set up to help get the word out.  I had the blog, YouTube channel, and a personal Facebook account, but that wasn’t enough.  I set up Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, Google+, Pinterest, and Vimeo accounts.  (By the way, that is a lot of social media channels to keep track of.)

RESEARCH

Then I researched how to make videos go viral and found this great article, “10 ways to make your video go viral,” by Karen Cheng.  She made a time laps video learning how to dance over the course of a year.  She has over 3 million views.  This was an excellent article on the different tactics she took.  I highly recommend it.

She suggested finding social news sites and blogs with a bigger audience than you, so their viewers would see it.  So I got accounts and set up a presence on Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Digg.  I also found many marketing blogs that I’d send it to.  With Reddit, the biggest question was what subreddit I would put it on.  I looked at an article Karen linked to about, “How to get a link on the front page of Reddit.”  I spent a few weeks looking at different ones, and what the requirements were for each, and decided I would start with what she used, the “getmotivated” one.  As a backup, I would repost to the “filmmakers” one.

She also said to look at your video for what companies might have a stake in it.  I have a Dodge Challenger in the video and mentioned my alma mater, Metro State.  Her release date was on Tuesday.  People watch videos at work and you want the whole week for it to catch on.

After several weeks of marketing set up, the launch date was ready.  I scripted out what I was going to say to each media channel so I would only have to copy and paste it, or make minor adjustments.

READY, SET, GO!

The night before I went to work on downloading it to Vimeo, YouTube, Flickr, and Pinterest.  I woke up early the next morning (so the East Coast would see it when they went to work) and first put it on Reddit.  I spent the whole day getting the word out.

For Facebook, I set up an event, besides posting it on my wall.  A lot of people don’t see a particular wall post which is why I made an event as well.  I figured everyone would see it then.  I also posted it three times on my wall throughout the day.  I e-mailed it to everyone I know, and put it on my social media channels.

On Twitter, I even sent it to some celebrities I’m following.  (A long shot, but they have thousands of followers and I only needed one retweeted, I thought.)

I also sent it out over my LinkedIn site, since I was looking for a job and what better place to post it.  I also put the video on my profile page so it would be one of the first things you would see.

RESULTS

On day one I got 313 YouTube views.  Pretty good from previous videos I posted, but nowhere near the 80,000 the dance video girl got.  I only had 4 upvotes from the getmotivated subreddit.

For the second day I deleted my post from Reddit, and reposted on the filmmakers one.  I expanded my posts to the local media, TV Stations, a couple of radio stations I listen to, and the newspaper.  I sent it to IGN (a film, TV, and video game site) since it was somewhat movie related.

Total for YouTube was 419 views, so only 106 new ones.  It was already beginning to drop off dramatically.  I only had one upvote on Reddit.

END GAME

After two weeks I had meager results.  YouTube had 474 views, Vimeo had 4, Flickr surprisingly had 59 views, 1 repin on Pinterest, and 12 likes on StumbleUpon.  I had 14 friends going to my “Facebook event,” 8 likes, and 7 shares.  The only media response was from one radio DJ, but it wasn’t mentioned on the radio or posted.  I did get a response from Hartley Brody (I sent him an e-mail since his article got the marketing ball rolling for me) which was very cool of him, but I didn’t get any other responses back.

Making it go viral would have been nice, but the main point was to get some job interviews out of it.  I was told about 2 part time jobs, and got a telephone interview for a full time gig.  (I’m still waiting for the results.)

WHAT I LEARNED

There’s no way to determine what will make a video go viral.  I thought I had a good title, “Unemployed Man Makes His Resume Into A Movie Trailer,” and a good emotional story to go with it.  Everyone knows economic times are tough, and I thought I could use that for people to give a helping hand, or helping repost.  I put in a few months worth of time into social media sites, and establishing a better online presence.  But I still got less than 500 views.  You never know what the public is going to latch onto, so you can only give yourself the best shot possible, and hope for the best.  And never stop learning or trying.