“Ever wonder why your ice cubes taste so boring?”
“Does your milk taste sour when you take a sip of it?”
“You ever have a big problem taking care of your eggs and keeping them from getting squashed or spoiled?”
“Ever wonder what the heck you’re going to do if you’re out on a picnic and you have an ice cream and the ants crawl all over your ice cream?”
Dr. Steve Brule is never short on advice for your health, living alone without getting lonely, or selecting a good sweet berry wine. The eccentric bumbling man is a jack of all trades, offering life lessons he learned from school, cavemen, and his web-wiz nephew Josh. What sort of advice does Steve Brule have for creating a good viral video? We’ll let Brule himself answer that one:
How accurate is Dr. Brule’s viral video advice? Let’s analyze what he did right, and what the good doctor might have overlooked.
What Did He Do Right?
Keep It Brief, Dummy!
(qatsi)
Don’t make the amateur mistake of making your videos too long. Web surfers craving entertainment tend to have short attention spans, especially if they have never seen a video by you and don’t know what to expect. Begin making your point right from the start to hook your audience in. If it takes you more than a couple of minutes to cut to the chase, you can bet that they will start clicking on “related videos.”
Use Your Own Identity, That’s What I Do!
More than anything else, people love new characters they’ve never encountered before. Rather than focusing on other videos that have gone viral and trying to copy their jokes and personalities, strive to be completely original. Steve Brule demonstrates this by proudly singing his own name into a mirror and being his goofy self. Remember – copy cat videos rarely make it as big as the original.
Don’t Just Promote Your Products, Stick To Entertainment!
Notice that Steve Brule’s viral video wasn’t trying to sell anything; it was only trying to entertain the viewer. With few exceptions, this is the key to a good viral video. You can, of course, feature your website links or maybe an overblown joke about your product (such as in the Old Spice videos), but a video that is noting more than a transparent sales pitch will never go viral. Focus on being genuinely entertaining first, and ease into selling only once you have a sizable audience of hungry subscribers.
Feature Your Video To Your Current Audience
If you want people to watch your video, what better place to start than your own blog? Though Brule didn’t have a blog to feature his video on, he played it on his show where he knew all his fans were watching. If you want to get a ton of hits (that’s what they call it when lots of people go on their computer to look at your computer), you can’t just publish a video and hope that people eventually come looking for it, that will never work dummy! Find your own initial audience and take your video straight to them.
What Did He Do Wrong?
Go For Strong Reactions
(source)
Though his video was funny, it wasn’t enough to elicit big belly laughs from most viewers. The only videos that go viral are the ones that can create physical responses in their viewers – big laughs, gasps, tears, shudders, etc. When people have a strong emotional reaction to content, they will feel compelled to share their discovery with friends and family. Brule singing in the mirror is good for a chuckle, but if you want to get to the upper-echelons of YouTube stardom, you must go all out and hold nothing back.
No Way For Viewers To Follow Up
The best viral videos get their users hooked, and then offer some way for them to follow up or give feedback. Making sure viewers have a way to follow up with you if they enjoy your video is one of the most important things to remember when creating your viral content. This can be easily accomplished by linking to a blog with similar content or encouraging viewers to subscribe to your YouTube channel. Though Brule neglected this rule, building a loyal following of subscribers makes it easy to publish videos in the future and get a lot of views right off the bat without much additional work. Why didn’t you think of that?
Thumbnail Photo source
