Viral video: will it work for you?
- Josh Mehlman
- 29 July 2009
Unfortunately, internet memes die out almost as quickly as they pop up, and online fame is fleeting - just ask the Star Wars kid or the Numa Numa guy. Who? Exactly. And if that doesn't make you miserable, consider this: you have almost no chance of creating the next viral video hit.
"The things that go viral are either completely random, like Clare Weberloff, or highly produced, big budget campaigns like Mark Ecko's Air Force One video," says Owen Lansbury
, managing partner of website design and development consultancy PreviousNext. "Mark Ecko had a $1 million budget, which was admittedly smaller than
what a conventional advertising campaign would have cost, but still out of the question for most small businesses."
And here's some more bad news: anyone who claims they can make a viral video is lying.
"You can't make a viral video; I've often been asked to make them and I have to explain to the client that the ‘viral' part is something that happens after the fact," says producer and director Sheldon Gillett, founder of Giant Squid Films. "It's like asking someone to write a hit
song or TV show."
Some of the most successful viral videos have turned out to be faked, causing an instantaneous backlash against the companies behind them.
"You can't make a viral video... It's like asking someone to write a hit song or TV show."
And if nothing else convinces you, this one should be the clincher: even the greatest viral video successes almost never make money.
"Even with the Susan Boyle phenomenon, because YouTube and ITV couldn't agree on the terms of putting ads on top of that content, they missed out on something like US$2 million in revenue from those clips," says Ian Gardiner, chief executive officer of online video specialist Viocorp.
Not just for ads
Nonetheless, online video can fulfil a broad range of corporate communication purposes: demonstrating thought leadership or expertise; indicating product quality; educating consumers on how to use your products; keeping customers informed of company news, events or new products; covering company events; case studies; in-store displays; and take-away promotional material (on a USB key or DVD).
As with any form of promotional material "it's important to assess your demographic and what kind of message you want to push to them, then develop content that meets those requirements," says Lansbury.
If you want to go down the thought leadership path, it pays to find out what your audience is interested in.
"Analyse what people are searching for around your area of expertise, then produce a video based on one of those high-ranking search terms," says Lansbury. "Then you've got a good chance of your video appearing high up in search results. If it's good enough, people will share that with their friends."
Quality still counts
Inexpensive video cameras and editing software have dramatically reduced the cost of producing video, but that doesn't mean cheaper is better.
"It used to be you couldn't produce a video for anything less than $50,000, but now $5000 will go a long way and you could potentially reach millions of people," says Gillett. "But people want it for 50 bucks, or do it themselves."
If you're selling a high-quality product at a premium price, a low-quality video will not convey a good impression, says Lansbury.
Hundreds of channels
Once the video is produced, you can choose to publish it on your website or on YouTube.
Self-hosting the file gives you the most control over who sees it, but might end up costing you more in data transfer fees because video files tend to be a lot larger than regular web pages or images.
At the other end of the spectrum, posting a video on YouTube costs nothing, but you have no control over who watches it, where it gets seen or what comments people post underneath it.
Companies such as Viocorp, for a fee, can host video content for
you and allow you to embed it in your website, while taking care of tricky technical issues, such as what happens if someone is looking at your site on a mobile phone. Viocorp's model also offers opportunities for getting an income from your video
content.
The growing popularity of online video means news sites are hungry for content. Public relations-savvy companies can take advantage of this situation by providing content that fills the need.
"All the major newspapers and TV channels have extensive online video sites but they don't have extensive budgets, so if you produce a good quality video, they're more likely to pick up your story and run it on their site," says Gillett. "Sites
like ninemsn have video channels for each magazine - there is just an explosion of online video channels." #
