What does it mean to say “go Viral”
All week we’ve been throwing around this word viral. In truth, that word gets tossed around perhaps more than it should; not because it’s inaccurate or passe, but because the word viral conjures up a very specific mental image.
Like this…
Or this…
Or even this…
I think it’s worth noting that all viral means is that something is spreadable…like a virus.
If you have the flu you can give it to someone fairly easily. In turn they can give it to someone very easily. Before you know it, what started with one person has spread to hundreds far outside of their circle of friends and family. This is the entire concept behind virality of content on the web. However what viral has come to mean is not that something is spread but that it has spread to some epic level.
Something does not need to become a Twitter trending topic to have spread virally. It doesn’t need to make the YouTube top 50 videos to have spread virally. Therefore, I’d like to clarify that this entire week has been about making content that is share-worthy; it’s about isolating factors that makes us as human beings, social creatures, that want to share things with others.
We’ve covered Entertainment (LOL, OMG) and Inspirational. The third major “bucket” for shareable videos is informational and educational, including how-to videos.
Informational, Educational and How-to Videos
One company that is making amazing videos that are educational is called Common Craft, in fact, educational videos is all they do. Common Craft makes videos that explain topics in easy-to-understand terms. For instance, here’s RSS in Plain English:
Now that’s not all that weird, doesn’t make you LOL or exclaim OMG, but it’s worth sharing, right? Especially if you needed to explain RSS to someone.
Here’s another example. Imagine you own a men’s clothing store, would a video like this be potentially helpful to your customers?
It almost certainly would be. But let’s think about other specific examples. Maybe you’re a restaurant, it might be a good idea to create a community around online cooking video. Something as basic as frying an egg to start:
If you are a nutritionist you could do healthy eating tips, if you’re a software company you could do installation and troubleshooting demos. The possibilities are endless.
Even though some of these videos aren’t likely to wind up as the next big internet hit, they could spread virally provided that you are smart about the community you are building, the tagging and naming you are using and the method you are using to syndicate your content.
Viral just means spreadable, don’t get overwhlemed, get creative and get active!