Going viral
If you’re a millennial or someone who remembers the world before the turn of the century, the phrase “going viral” could have two different meanings. So, in addition to meaning the spread of a virus, which is a bad thing, the term refers to the rapid spread of a video, and that’s a great thing.
When an uploaded video goes viral in the good sense, it becomes a sensation that users share and share and share — in the process gathering more numbers of viewers than there are grains of sand in an hourglass. Having your video go viral is like releasing a hit record or having your book make the New York Times best seller list, except that you’re unlikely to get anywhere near as rich from going viral even if you get a couple of million hits.
There’s no way of telling whether a video will go viral, but there are some traits that successful ones share. Though we discuss ways throughout this book to improve the odds of your video going viral, here are some factors that can make a video a runaway success:
Spontaneity: There’s a real in-the-moment feel to a viral video that captures a random and decisive moment that you could never repeat. The popular video “Charlie bit my finger — again!” and its more than 800 million clicks comes to mind.
Be light-hearted: People love stuff that’s silly and that makes them laugh and think — or that even make them consider trying something, much like the Coke-and-Mentos video collection that has drawn hundreds of millions of views.
Get it out on social media: Yeah, you can rely on chance that someone stumbles across your video, but that’s sort of passive, like waiting by the phone for someone to “find you” for the job. A better tack is for you to let social media know about your latest masterpiece. Just a few tweets here, a Facebook post there, and then maybe an announcement on Reddit can instantly start turning the wheels of virality.
Wasting lots and lots of time
One person’s waste of time is another’s quest for information, or someone’s need to laugh or learn about something, so YouTube viewers simply spend a lot of time watching videos.
That’s a good thing, and a win-win situation all around. The audience gets its dose of entertainment, education, and exploration. And your channel benefits because, as viewership increases, so does the potential for someone to find you. And, when that someone finds your channel and you happen to have set it up for receiving advertising revenue (the YouTube term here is monetization), you can earn some money.
Here are some numbers, provided by YouTube, that indicate how much (potential) time-wasting is really going on:
More than 2 billion unique users visit YouTube each month.
Over 1 billion hours of video are watched daily on YouTube
According to Nielsen, YouTube reaches more U.S. adults ages 18 to 34 than any cable network.
Seeing What Makes a YouTube Channel Unique
Four walls do not make a home — but it does provide a good start. How you adorn those walls and furnish those halls is what makes it uniquely yours — uniquely your home, in other words. Well, your YouTube channel isn’t much different.
When you first create a YouTube channel, it’s nothing more than an empty template on a page. Over time, you add videos, organize videos into playlists, and create channel art with your own logo, designs, and branding. Obviously, your video content plays a big part in what makes your channel special, but so does the channel’s look and feel. Everything from the layout and font color to the type of content and its subscribers helps set one channel apart from the others.
Though this book takes pride in describing effective ways to create and maintain your YouTube channel for the next couple of hundred pages, let’s look at some basics first:
Have people find your channel. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it fall, does it make a sound? Who knows? More appropriately, if you create a YouTube channel and nobody visits it, it’s a safe bet to say that all your good work has come to nothing.Viewers have to know that your channel exists before they can visit. The main way you have of letting people know you exist is by making sure your content shows up high in the search results of both Google and YouTube itself. (Don’t forget that YouTube is the second-most-popular search engine, just behind Google.) To get those high rankings, you have titles, tags, and descriptive text to associate tons of search-engine-friendly keywords with each of your videos — doing that will bring viewers searching for content in contact with your content rather than with someone else’s content. It’s also important that viewers watch, like, comment on, and share your video — yet more indications to the search engines and YouTube’s algorithms that your content and channel are important. For good measure, use social media to prep your audience for content that’s coming down the pike — just like a movie studio creates a buzz for a big summer blockbuster by teasing you with previews and trailers weeks before release. Users often take advantage of YouTube’s personalized video recommendations, such as the home screen Recommended feed (see Figure 1-4) and the Up Next feature. If a user clicks on your video and enjoys the content, there’s a good chance they’ll visit your channel to see what else you have to offer. The more appealing your channel looks at first glance, the more likely a viewer will be to stop and spend some time exploring your channel and your other videos.
Connect with your viewers. You definitely want to build a community of followers, and for that to happen, you need to actively communicate with them. That means everything from having them subscribe to your channel, engaging with them in your channel’s Comments section and on the Community tab, and exposing them to your other social media accounts. You can do all this directly on your channel page.
Provide them with a clear description of your channel. When viewers know what your channel has to offer, and if it appeals to their interests, they’re more likely to visit often, and maybe even subscribe to it. But you need to get the word out.
FIGURE 1-4: The YouTube Recommended feed.
Angling for subscriptions
Viewers who like your content will come back and watch more, but viewers who love your content will want to subscribe. Why not? When you keep reaching for the same print magazine whenever you see it, eventually you just subscribe to it so that it regularly comes to the mailbox at your front door. YouTube offers repeat viewers of your channel the same option. Basically, all they have to do is click the Subscribe button, as shown in Figure 1-5, on your channel’s home page.
After viewers subscribe to your channel, you have to make it worth their while to view it or else they’ll unsubscribe faster than you can say “Jack Nicholson.” Here’s what “making it worth their while” entails:
Stay in touch with subscribers. According to YouTube, viewers subscribe to millions of channels every day, so it’s important to stay in touch if you want to stay uppermost in their minds. Suggest to your viewers that they follow you on social media so that you can let them know when new content is available. This strategy helps your