How to Make a Video Go Viral

You’re probably wondering what my take is on how to go viral on YouTube. In the video above, I discussed two different things: Making your video go viral on YouTube AND about AMP’d videos.

Now what is an AMP’d video? It’s an acronym I use.

Automated
Magnetic
Perpetual

Just last year, I put on an event to help my clients create promotional videos, and in the promo video for THAT event, I explained the difference between A-roll and B-roll. In the video above, I also explained how important music is – its effect, how to use it, and where to get just the right music to use to deliver your promo video effectively.

1With this strategy, you’ll eventually get lots of traffic. In the video above, you’ll know exactly what I mean. There I showed a video that went viral, one of Devin Supertramp’s. In case you haven’t seen his channel yet, I suggest you check it out. His videos are amazing and a lot of fun. The rope swing down at Arches is an epic video of his and you can understand why it went viral.

On his channel, I want you to click on ‘More’ and then click on ‘Statistics’. There you’ll see an interesting curve showing that the video shot up really quickly in terms of views, let’s say about 10 million views! And then it started to taper off. It still grew though because this channel grew so much.

And then you’ll see that something happened at one point. Perhaps he did something to promote the video because something caused it to go viral AGAIN and it jumped up. And then it has kind of tapered off again. Pay attention to the shape of the curve: It goes up and then it starts to level off.

2Now I’m going to contrast that with another video. It’s a video I made with Kris Krohn, ‘How to Invest in Real Estate with No Money’.

If we look at that same graph, we come down here and click on ‘Statistics’, you’ll see an interesting green line. You’ll see that right at the beginning, it started out flat. Most people would be worried about that, but we predicted this.

I knew that this would happen. And I’ll admit, I was predicting that this pivot point or this increase would happen April or May, and in this particular video, it took until July before it really got traction. But it did get traction in July. And you see that it’s been consistent since July. And then even in January, we see an increase.

Now we’re averaging about 6,000 new views on this video per month and it’s just picking up momentum.

The other thing that’s cool is if you look at ‘Subscriptions Driven’. When we launched this video, this was the fourth week in, so this YouTube channel was brand new. The channel had no subscribers. But four weeks in, we had a handful of subscribers and it was less than a hundred. And this video has been responsible for adding 454 subscribers to the channel. A hundred and thirty of which have happened in the last month!

So although we published this video a year and a few months ago, just in the last month, this video has brought in 130 new subscribers. So the AMP’d strategy has a growth curve like that.

To contrast the two, the viral growth curve shoots up and then starts to taper off whereas the AMP’d page curve starts out flat and then starts to get steeper and steeper and steeper. Is it bad if one of your videos goes viral? Absolutely not! That would be totally awesome! The thing is you just can’t predict it and so you don’t want to try and plan for it or try and predict it.

You probably heard the analogy of ‘If I were to give you a choice between taking a million dollars right now or I will give you a penny right now and then that would double every day for the next month. I’m giving you the choice. Would you choose the million dollars or would you choose the penny doubled every day for the next 31 days?’.
Do you know the answer there?

The answer is you’d get over 10 million dollars with the penny doubling for a month versus just that 1 million dollars. The way that this analogy relates is I’ve seen people who’ve put all their effort and energy into one video having it go viral. And even those that have gone viral, it has a short life span. It goes viral, it gets the company some results and some success, and then it just tapers off and dies out. And then they’re all done!

On the other hand, with a long-term, consistent AMP’d video strategy, you can predict your channel being successful. And you can predict the views that your videos are going to get.

Also, unless you have a huge budget to invest in just one video, you know, say five or six figures, to invest in the making of that one video, and then the budget to advertise and market it, I’d say don’t even go there. Don’t even try to go the viral route. Eventually, you’ll have a video that just naturally goes viral and I would say that’s a bonus, but let’s be strategic. Let’s go for that penny doubling every day approach.

If you do decide to hire a video production company that’s going to help you make a viral video, make sure you pick a company that’s credible. This is going to be a big investment. Make sure you:

  • Know how many videos they have made for their clients.
  • Know how many of those have gone viral.
  • If they say “Ooh, you know, a hundred of our videos have gone viral”, find out what that means.
  • Know how many views did those videos actually get.
  • Have them SHOW you, not just tell you.

So, just compare what you think. If you’re going to invest $52,000 towards a video and the marketing towards the video to help it go viral versus that same investment going towards 52 videos that have a strategy of pulling in lots of traffic, you might as well go or the AMP’d video strategy that we talked about.

Why? Because it’s predictable. You’re going to get predictable traffic. 52 videos over the course of the year. Which one do you think will get better results, especially better results long-term?

Now whenever I’ve talked about consistency or having a long-term plan, what does that mean? I mean you should have a long-term plan with your YouTube strategy, your YouTube channel.

What time frame are you thinking of? Are you thinking 3 months? Making a video every day for 1 month? Are you thinking a year? Two years?

Okay, think about a 2-year strategy. Pick a style of videos and the content of these videos that you’ll enjoy doing for two years even if it didn’t bring you in any revenue. Okay, what if for two years that brought you in no revenue and you wouldn’t start generating significant revenue until that third year, would you still be able to do that?

That’s what I mean by a long-term strategy. Create a game plan that you’re gonna be able to stick to for the long haul.

3You have to give people some time to get used to your style, your schedule, and your energy! At first, some people after getting bombarded with social media or perhaps emails and all these videos from you, they’ll think “I don’t know if I wanna watch this.”. But! At the end of that month, people might start to get a sense of “Okay, this person is serious about this.”.

So don’t stop! Don’t start and then sprint when you aren’t seeing results just YET. YOU WILL get traction, so do not give up on that strategy. Just keep giving consistent content or keep sending out those emails even if you know they’ll just pile up. With consistency, you’re strengthening your relationship with your audience. This is how to get a video to go viral. And I’m not talking about a one-off viral video. I’m talking about your succeeding videos once you’ve got people’s attention.

You can tweak just a little bit and make it so much more powerful. If you make these newsletters, blog posts, or these AMP’d videos, then you can make them Automatic, Magnetic, and Perpetual so that one year, two years from now, you’re pulling in more and more visitors who have never heard of you before!

These are people who have never heard of you or the video you made two years ago are now finding you and subscribing to your channel. Your videos will get you way more results 1 to 2 years from now than they do right now even if you have a big following if you follow the AMP’d video strategy.

Don’t expect your YouTube video to be a quick fix. I recommend having a very long-term strategy and being realistic with your goals.

So is there a quick way on how to go viral on YouTube? Theres none. What you need is CONSISTENCY. Be sure you’re consistent in your theme and be consistent with your schedule! Create a schedule that’s realistic, that you can keep for years at a time and then just stick to that schedule. If you’re consistent in that way, people will subscribe, people will start to watch your videos on a regular basis, and your channel will grow!

Form

Click Button Below To Access the Free E-Course

Get Access Now

Tuesdays & Thursdays are my favorites!

Why?? Because I get to show YOU new videos of HOW-TO GUIDES, VIDEO MARKETING IDEAS, or some AWESOME YOUTUBE TIPS AND TRICKS!

Don’t miss out. Join us and subscribe to my YouTube channel today!

Subscribe on YouTube!