Last Tuesday, “General” Larry Platt was just another 62-year-old from Atlanta. But on Wednesday, American Idol aired Larry’s tryout performance of his original song, “Pants on the Ground.”
By Thursday, the video went viral and now has more than 500,000 views on multiple accounts on YouTube.
His song is a trending topic on Twitter, his lyrics are on hundreds of Facebook statuses, and he is being interviewed by top T.V. and radio shows around the country. Even Brett Favre was caught doing his best Larry Platt impression. All of this came from the power of a viral video.
So, what is a viral video? Here is a quick peek at the concepts of successful viral videos.
Viral videos play on the fact that we want to share the feeling we get from the video with others. If it’s funny, stupid or crazy we forward it to the people we think will appreciate it for being funny, stupid, or crazy. Many of the most popular viral videos were never designed as promotional viral videos.
The key for you as a business owner or marketing professional is to tie in a very subtle outro scene to the end of the video that includes your website. If it’s too blatant of a promo then it won’t get forwarded and thus won’t go viral.
Ideas are everywhere, but there are no guarantees that your video will go viral. Watch out for companies that say they can guarantee that your video will go viral because human behavior isn’t 100% predictable. Using a firm like Prime Concepts or a few others that help produce online videos can help with concepts and production quality, but the results are measured in the marketplace.
In future posts we’ll explore how you can harness the power of this virtually free publicity for your business. Until then….
What are your favorite viral videos and why?
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Great info, Ford. Viral videos are becoming a powerful tool to attract attention to or help build a brand for a business or a person. I especially agree that you can’t be too blatant to self-promote in your video or it’ll turn off viewers, since most people are biased against ads and too obvious a plug for you or your business will come across like an ad. Still, it’s a tough line to toe. Would love to see more posts about how to use viral videos for branding and building mindshare online.