5 Ways to Create a Viral “Million-View” Video on Social Media

In a market that’s now essentially blanketed by social media, creating content with the ability to spread can help a brand grow quickly and capture audience attention. But there’s no exact formula for creating content that succeeds at going viral.

That said, viral clips (videos that spread widely) tend to share a number of common traits. Understanding these common factors can help you create content that’s more engaging and easier to discover. In the article below, The7 has rounded up some tips from the top video content experts at Sprout Social — let’s dive in.

What is a viral clip?

A piece of content is called viral when it spreads across multiple social media channels and reaches a huge audience quickly, racking up massive engagement and shares. A tweet, a Facebook post, or a video can all go viral.

What is a viral video? Image: Sprout Social

Video content can spread across many different platforms, from Facebook and YouTube to TikTok and Twitter. But how do you create a viral video marketing piece? And how can you make sure your video reaches the biggest possible audience? Let’s explore 5 tips for creating viral videos from the video content experts at Sprout Social.

5 expert tips for creating viral video content

Drawing on their skill and experience creating video content that regularly reaches huge audiences, the expert team at Sprout Social shares a few tips you can use while producing and optimizing your own videos.

Start with a brief

The first step in creating any potentially viral video is planning everything thoroughly: putting together a brief and a storyboard. The purpose of a creative brief is to nail down your real objective, key message, tone, length, distribution channel, and other important details.

Writing a brief is the first step to take before you start creating a viral video.

Every brief helps align the video’s message and overall purpose, from the content team all the way to the production team. This way, all brand-related content stays cohesive and shares the same overall vision, which in turn strengthens your brand.

Know your target audience

If you don’t know anything about the people you’re targeting, your video will fail fast. To actually create content that spreads to your target audience — and beyond, ideally — you need to know what will resonate with them and genuinely make them want to share your video.

You should build an Empathy Map to fully understand your target audience. This will give you detailed insight into what will grab your audience’s attention, so your content lines up with what they’re actually searching for online.

An empathy map.

Define your objective

Knowing something has the potential to go viral isn’t enough for a solid social media marketing strategy. You need to know why you actually want your video to go viral.

Is your goal simply to raise brand awareness? Grow your online following? Or are you hoping this viral video will drive conversions?

Each objective calls for different creative requirements depending on which audience segment and funnel stage you’re targeting, so you need a clear idea of your goal before you start production.

Open the video strong

Every great viral video grabs attention immediately. The best way to do this is to use the word “you” within the first five seconds. Recent research from TubeBuddy and Hey.com shows videos that use words like “you” or “your” in the first 5 seconds get 97% more views than videos that don’t use these words at all.

A few ways to maximize your video’s impact include:

• Creating an unpredictable or hard-to-guess twist
• Making your content relevant
• Engaging viewers’ emotions
• Using attention-grabbing audio or music clips

Tell a story

The final tip from the Sprout Social video production team on making a video go viral is to engage your audience through storytelling.

You can tell a compelling story in a short amount of time (a viral video shouldn’t be long) by picking a shared, familiar setting for your creative concept.

Lean into common narratives your audience already knows well, so they can dive straight into the video without needing much background. This is a great way to create relevant content your audience can genuinely relate to and want to share with friends and family. It’s also a great starting point for building anticipation and grabbing attention.

How to boost your video’s discoverability

Now that you know the steps to create a viral video, here are some ways to boost its discoverability, from optimizing titles and descriptions to using hashtags and building a promotion plan.

Keep your video summary short and to the point

Don’t drag out the intro, even if it’s engaging and holds viewers’ attention.

Viral videos online are typically short. That’s why platforms like TikTok cap video length at 60 seconds. Create a piece of content that grabs attention and tells the whole story within 30-60 seconds. Fail to do this, and you risk losing viewers — and they certainly won’t feel the need to share your video with anyone.

A viral video shouldn’t run too long. Image: Sprout Social

Add captions

Adding captions to your video doesn’t just extend its reach — it also improves the user experience by letting people watch even with the sound off.

In fact, quite a lot of users scroll through social media in situations where they can’t turn on sound, so adding captions helps you reach a wider audience who can watch and share your video no matter where they are, who they are, or what they’re doing.

Write engaging post copy that matches your video

Writing engaging, optimized copy matters whether it’s a title, a YouTube video description, or a caption on TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and so on.

Post copy shouldn’t just explain the video’s content — it should also spark curiosity and help your video rank higher in search results. That doesn’t mean writing titles in all caps or using clickbait abbreviations, the way you often see on YouTube and in Facebook captions. Instead, take the time to craft quality copy, which can help drive additional views.

Use hashtags

Hashtags are a popular and effective tool for extending reach across various social media platforms, and video platforms like YouTube and TikTok are no exception.

Image: Agencia Bowie

Using popular hashtags in your TikTok caption or YouTube video description can help users find your video more easily when they search for similar content. Use hashtags relevant to your video, or tap into hashtags that are trending and popular on the platform (but don’t overdo it).

Promote your video

It’s hard for a video to go viral without some promotion behind it. Don’t just publish content and then sit back waiting for people to find it.

Instead, put together a complete promotion strategy, including cross-platform sharing plans, and make it clear which platform(s) you originally published the video on.

Use the platforms your target audience is actually on, to maximize the chances they’ll watch and share the video.

Conclusion

By applying the expert tips and principles covered in this article, you can now confidently create your own viral video. Weaving these viral videos into your overall marketing strategy is a great way to boost reach, brand awareness, and conversions.

Source: MarketingAI

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