I’m a fan (or maybe it’s what I hate it when people make me play) of Buzzword Bingo. That’s where you’re sitting in a meeting, conference, classroom, presentation, or maybe just on Twitter and you’re being flooded by Buzzwords. Buzzwords are generally meant to try to show that you’ve “got it” and that you’re on top of the newest trend. They are made in a poor attempt to try to make an old concept new, and thus inject marketing dollars into it, or get something sold.
The one that grinds my gears the most is “Viral”. “Omg, we’re about to launch a viral video”, someone might say. The moment someone says that, you should quickly cover your ears, or at least stop paying attention to that person. On the internet viral actually means this: Something that has unexpectedly spread due to people sharing it with others in a rapid way, generally going past a certain tipping point and becoming an epidemic, where nearly everyone says, “yea, I’ve seen that”.
Let’s look over this again:
- Unexpected- Unless someone is damn good, and there are less than .0001% of you out there that are that good, you can’t “make” your video go viral. You can try to seed it in the right places, but unless its something people really love and need to share its not going to spread. The curve should go up for views, not spike and then fall off the face of the earth. Every damn video your company puts out will not be viral. Soulja Boy’s main “Crank That” videos have gone viral. The rest of his stuff just gets a lot of views. If you can actually consistently make viral videos, then you’ve probably been getting 7 figure paychecks for it in the past year, and no one knows what you actually do because you don’t want to spoil the secret. It is nearly impossible to conceptualize in your head what the internet will take and run with. When you watched what we know now as the “Rick Roll” in the 80’s, when it was just a music video did you think, “OMG THIS IS VIRAL?”. No you didn’t. You can’t figure it out. Stop trying.
- Rapid- Just getting a lot of views slowly over time doesn’t do it. Once people catch onto it, it needs to spread like wildfire. This often involves 4Chan picking it up, it hitting the front page of Digg, and it getting reposted to a few hundred if not a few thousand forum posts. Janet Jackson’s boob falling out was viral. Within 24 hours, the entire world knew exactly what she had under that costume.
- Tipping Point- If a few thousand people see it, that’s great, but it doesn’t make it viral. The internet is huge these days. If you aren’t hitting hundreds of thousands of views in the “rapid” stage, then you likely again are missing viral.
- Everyone’s seen it- I don’t think anyone who was on the Internet in the late 90’s didn’t see the hamster dance, then you probably weren’t actually on the internet.
Viral videos often turn into memes of some sort if they are really on-key and accepted by the internet.
So what are your videos if not viral?
- Popular- Just because people watch the Presidental Debates didn’t make them viral. People sent them around, sure. They weren’t viral.
- Funny- Don’t confuse every funny video with viral. It’s just not it. The joke that you thought of and told your mom in 4th grade might have been funny, but it wasn’t viral.
- Promotional- There’s a good chance that this video is promoting you, your company, or your product. Sometimes this will get spread around
- Well Promoted- So you just got 30,000 views of your video after blasting it out to twitter and having dozens of people make best attempts to distribute it. Then it falls off the face of the earth. Guess what? Not viral. You just promoted the hell out of it. What’s why it got views. If it was so good on its own merit, it wouldn’t have needed that.
In short, the internet takes care of viral for us. It acts as a hive mind and distributes it for you. Sure, there’s tricks you can do, promotions you can make, but what you’ve done at that point is promote something well, not create something that went viral.
Having a “viral video” isn’t the only mark of success. Your video can serve its purpose without being viral. Not being viral doesn’t mean you’ve failed (unless that was your goal), or made a bad video. There’s probably a few hundred actual viral videos every year at best. Yours just doesn’t happen to be one of them.Viral isn’t always good in fact. The “Motrin Moms” ad recently went viral. I don’t think it had the same effect that they had intended.
Instead, try making a video with a purpose and content, that isn’t intended to be viral. Maybe it will become viral on its own.
