AN ART, NOT A SCIENCE: WHY VIRAL VIDEOS ARE A TRICKY BUSINESS
Viral videos really are a tricky, tricky thing. There's no one, sure fire trick to getting a lot of views. You can take all the right steps and still wind up with fewer than one hundred views. Other times, you might make some silly little video you think is kinda stupid, but it's worth a chuckle or two, so you put it online and it gets a thousand views less than an hour later. You just never really know how the viewers are going to receive your video.
Think of your viral video audience like a ten month old baby. They can be kind of finicky about what they find entertaining. What makes them giggle and squeal with delight one day may only annoy them the next.
It's all about putting your videos up in the right place at the right time, so there really is a lot of luck involved. You can dramatically improve your chances of breaking through to the right audience by way of the information in this e-Book, but if someone tells you there's any such thing as a one hundred percent effective way to guarantee a ton of views, they're telling an outright lie.
THE LUCK OF THE DRAW
It's a little like playing the lottery. You can never guarantee a win, but... you can improve your chances by buying a lot of tickets.
Now the good news is that the tickets to this proverbial lottery are free. It doesn't cost a cent to put your videos online, so just go ahead and post your videos wherever you see fit, as many times as possible.
What's more, make a lot of videos. Not only will making a lot of videos increase your chances of one of them breaking out, but with every video you make, you get better at the art and craft of making videos and learning to intuit what might and might not work for garnering views.
That's another point we've been meaning to make here. Don't spend all your time worrying about this one video that's going to be your magnum opus. Make a bunch of videos. They won't all be great, but it's the only way to practice. It's like if you learn to paint. The first painting you create isn't going to be the Mona Lisa... it's going to stink, to be honest. However, you have to make those early pieces for practice or you'll never make a good video at all.
KEEPING AT IT
There was a story of a Chinese painter. The Emperor came to him and requested a painting of a bird in flight. He gave him one year to produce the painting, and if he failed in this task, he would have him executed (you know how those Chinese Emperors were, always threatening to execute people).
A year later, the Emperor visited the painter in his studio. He looked around and saw thousands and thousands of sketches and paintings of birds. Some were kind of rough looking, most were average, and a few were beautiful.
The Emperor was impressed, and asked the painter "Which one is mine?" The painter said "Give me a minute." and he sat down and painted a new piece for the Emperor, more beautiful than any of the others in the studio.
The Emperor asked him why he waited until now to paint it when he had a whole year to get it just right. The painter replied "I spent the whole year painting nothing but birds. Each painting was better than the last. I wanted you to have the most beautiful one, so I waited until now, to ensure that this is the best painting of a bird I could possibly create."
Or, long story short: Learn by doing. You may not be Francis Ford Coppola just yet, but you may just get there if you keep practicing. The more videos you make, the more practice you get, and the more chances you have at getting that breakout video that goes viral.