‘We want to go viral’ is one of the client requests most feared by any media or PR professional. Certainly, it’s little wonder – given the popularity of internet sensations like Gangnam Style, Grumpy Cat and the latest pandemic of ‘Harlem Shake’ videos – that companies should want to harness the popularity of internet memes. Whilst the odds are certainly stacked against anyone creating something that becomes contagious, there are several measures that you can take to give your corporate offering the best chance of reaching as many eyes as possible:
The ideas should come from within your company
If you have a PR or marketing department, or indeed use an agency that knows your business inside out, you should harness their creative talent for any campaign. After all, it’s their day job to generate stories that will reach your intended audience (and if they aren’t doing this then they aren’t doing their job properly!)
Optimise for search engines
Good SEO is a vital element to help any content reach its intended audience (whether niche or broad) on the internet. You can use Google’s free research tools – Google Trends and the Google Keyword Tool – to gain insight into what’s trending in relation to your project. Particularly when it comes to video, these allow you to optimize your offering so that it appears higher up in search rankings (remember that YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine).
For example, if you’re posting your corporate video on YouTube, make sure you add high search volume keywords into the title of the post, its description and its tags.
Identify influencers who will spread the word for you
Content won’t go viral on its own. Employing the expertise of those who are specialists in social media is always helpful at this point. The experts will know how to get your offering in front of the right people, who will then go on to share your message with their followers. Publishing your content and hoping for the best will simply not do in this instance.
With video, choosing the right video hosting platform is all-important
Putting any video content you produce on YouTube is a no-brainer. However, it’s important to be strategic about how you upload it. Take time to consider which categories your video is best-suited to, and use YouTube’s inbuilt analytics to shed light on how many views your video will require to climb into the most-viewed charts.
Creating content with the aim of going viral isn’t about producing something that is visually amazing and just uploading it to your website and YouTube, then sitting back and waiting for the audience to start viewing it. Getting your offering in front of the right people should take the combined efforts of PR, SEO and social media experts alike.
By Jamie Field (@jamiefield154), Head of Production at TopLine Communications