Evan Carmichael breaks down three steps to make videos more likely to go viral: stand for something meaningful that evokes emotion, work with top creators like he did with Motoya Zen on his "Believe" video that hit half a million views, and plant seeds by sharing it across your audience and channels to spark organic spread.
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How to make a viral video. So I got a great question from one of my YouTube viewers, love you guys, Jonathan, who wrote in to say, I watch your videos every morning. I was able to build an online academy and start growing. Hope you share how to create a viral marketing video for startup businesses. Keep inspiring, thanks a lot. So before I get into my advice, I want to preface it with it's really hard to make a viral video and A lot of times when you plan it, it doesn't work out. I remember being at a conference where the topic was viral videos, and they had 4 experts on stage talking about it, and none of them had actually created a viral video. They analyzed cases that did go viral, that did take off, but they had never actually done it themselves. And some of the ones that they have put up, my videos had already done better than what They were showing off. So it's really hard, okay? You're not gonna get a viral video by doing the market research and crunching the data and seeing if we combine these 5 elements together, then we'll get a viral video. It doesn't work out that way because people aren't falling in love with data. The number 1 thing you have to have for your video is you need to stand for something. The video has to be important, has to make me feel something, has to get me excited. Right? If you don't do that, it's not gonna work, right? If you just combine elements together, it's not gonna take off. So you have to have a purpose. What's the purpose of this video? The best video that I've done has over half a million views. Okay, it's not like multi-million, but it's not 500 views. It's over half a million views. And the video is called Believe by Matthieu Rizem. And believe is the theme, right? We created this video hoping that it would do well, but with a noble purpose, right? We are standing for something. We want people to be inspired. We want people to watch it every day and feel like they want to go and make a positive change in their lives. That's why we created it. So your intention has to be noble. It has to stand for something going in, not just, "Hey, I want to make a video to promote my business." That's not going to go viral because people don't care, right? If I said, "Hey, here's a video about Evan," that's not going to go viral, okay? But if you create a video that touches people somehow, that stands for something important, then it's much more likely to take off. Because people love it and they believe in it. Number 2: Work with the best. If you want to have success with your video, find people who, who can articulate your creation, what's in your head, and turn it into video, have done it before, and who are really great artists at what they do. If you're trying to do it yourself, or if you have somebody on your team who kind of knows how to do video editing, the chances of that taking off are really tiny. When I created my Believe video, it's called Believe by Motoya Zen because I partnered up with a YouTube artist named Motoya Zen. Through them. And this is what he does. He creates amazing inspirational motivational videos. And I went to him because I was already watching his stuff. I was watching his content. I loved them. I couldn't wait for the next one to come out. They engaged me and I thought, you know what, if anybody's going to do a great job of making this video, it's going to be him. If anybody can take that feeling that I want to get expressed out there and make it into a video version, This is the guy to do it. And he agreed and he created an amazing product that we were able to put out on YouTube and on our websites. So work with the best. Find people who you look at their stuff and it touches you. Because if it touches you, makes you feel something, then it's likely going to touch your audience with the message that you're trying to get out there. Number 3: Plant seeds. You shouldn't have to do too much marketing with a viral video because it's supposed to be viral, right? It's supposed to get out there. People are supposed to talk about talk about it for you without having to advertise. I got the over half a million views on my video without spending money on advertising, just from people talking about it, but I still planted seeds at the beginning. So what I did was when the video first came out, I wrote to my newsletter and I put it on my social media networks and I put it on my website, and Matthijs also has a following, so he put it on his networks, and we got a quick initial surge of people coming to the site. Not hundreds of thousands, You know, maybe 10,000. I forget what it was on that first day. Or maybe a few thousand. It wasn't that much, but basically you're planting seeds so that you have a lot of people watching at the start and they can help spread that message for you. So it helps, it helps the video go viral much more quickly. So you don't need to plan this huge massive campaign around it, but you want to have, you want to have people who are willing to watch it and share, who are part of your network, part of your community. So what I would do is, you know, look at who your customers are, look at who you already have on your social media networks. And share that video with them. And if you're co-creating with somebody else, have them help share it. Just plant some seeds so that it's not starting from absolutely nothing. You have a little bit of traction to start it off. So remember, to get your viral video to work, you want to stand for something, work with the best, and plant seeds. Believe. For those of you watching, you like the video, you can support me by clicking the link in the description below. Give the video a thumbs up, leave a comment, let me know what you're thinking. If you've created a viral video, I'd love to see it. In the comments below and click on my face, subscribe to the channel. Thank you so much. I'll see you soon.
