Ted Lau: CEO, Ballistic Arts Media Studios
While it's nice to have videos of your CEO talking about your company's five-year plan or a more traditional "corporate video," companies gutsy enough to be different are the ones winning the attention (and dollars) of new customers.
Viral videos reach beyond someone already interested in buying your service or product and imbed themselves into the minds of the general public.
Just look to the videos that have become ingrained into our everyday online minds. Some are quirky, funny, different and even controversial. However, all of these videos have one quality in common: they're authentic.
In the world of ever-increasing transparency, companies that will win over the hearts and minds of the consumer in the next century will be real and not just trying to sell you a product by telling you what they think you want. Everything you do in marketing, including viral videos, must consistently reflect your company's values and must be real. If they're not, you'll be exposed as being a fake or inauthentic.
Viral videos typically don't necessarily need to look polished or produced with tens of thousands of dollars, but they do need to be clever, engaging and even a little quirky.
My personal favourites right now are the "world's first lip-dub proposal" (which made a few people I know tear up), the rapping airline attendant from Southwest Airlines and Honda's Ferris Bueller homage.
At the end of the day, simply put something out there that's authentic about your company, its values and what you stand for. And if you can get Matthew Broderick to star in it, that helps, too.
Marshall Self: Head of media solutions, Google Canada
Here's a little-known secret: The most successful businesses on YouTube have never had a viral hit.
YouTube has a global, diverse audience, with 850 million unique users visiting every month. Seventy-two hours of video are uploaded every minute. If you're trying to reach the entire YouTube audience, that's a lot of noise to break through. Successful businesses understand that they don't need to connect with the whole YouTube audience; they just need to engage with the right audience.
Here are three tips to get you started:
1 Know your audience. For small businesses, the most successful videos are often the ones you've never heard of. If you're a toy company like Rokenbok Toys, for example, you care about families who are in the market to buy a children's toy. This means that you don't need to create a video that has mass appeal. While none of the company's videos have gone "viral," YouTube is now its No. 1 source of web traffic and has helped it maintain a flourishing business.
2 Videos need to be interesting, but that doesn't mean they can't be educational. There are three times as many searches for "how to" videos as there are for "music videos" on YouTube. Instead of focusing on being clever, focus on being relevant.
3 Videos don't need to be professionally produced to gain views. Many small businesses shoot and produce videos in-house using tools as simple as a handheld camera and YouTube's video-editing features. Because you can focus on reaching people that are most interested in your topic, content and relevancy trump production value.
Andrew Furmanczyk: Piano teacher and principal, Andrew Furmanczyk Academy of Music
When most people hear of a viral video they think of a popular video with millions of views. While this is true, at what point does a video become viral? A regular video crosses into viral video territory when both the growth rate and view-to-share conversion rate are high.
There are two types of viral videos: acute viral, which has a sudden explosion of views before fading into obscurity, and chronic viral, videos that continue to draw viewers over time.
Topics that are hot in current news could fall into the acute category while content that is useful, such as a great performance or educational tutorial, fall into the chronic category.
Three tips to help your video become viral:
1 The title of your video should be easily searchable and hook viewers into watching immediately.
2 Find your style and voice and be consistent. Your audience won't stick around if they can't figure out what kind of experience you're offering them. Experiment with different topics and research other videos to see what works and what doesn't.
3 Videos should be fast-paced, interesting and keep the viewer's attention from start to finish. Your video will fail to become viral if your viewers watch and leave without enough emotional impact to share it with at least one of their friends. Having viewers so engaged that they show their friends is how a video eventually becomes viral.
Lastly, have fun! Don't be too serious.
Know that any video could essentially become viral as trends change daily. Who knows, your video could be next.
