According to Wikipedia, “Infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data, or knowledge. They present complex information quickly and clearly.” They are an excellent tool to communicate a brand message. Neil Patel (@neilpatel) co-founder of KISSmetrics.com (@KISSmetrics), has written an article explaining 5 ways to help Infographics go viral:
Step #1: Submit an SEO optimized press release
Step #2: Create a social media release
Step #3: Create a social media sharing plan for your Infographic
LEGO (@LEGO_Group) turns 80 this year. To celebrate, the company produced this 17-minute cartoon about its humble origins and how it revolutionized the toy industry. 17-minutes long and it succeeded in getting 2 million views in 2 weeks. 17-minutes! And the pace of it is slow-moving, at that!
If a slow-moving 17-minute-long video can get more than 2 million views, it proves viral videos don’t need to be constrained to only 3-minutes of flash mobs or kittens!
On Fast Company (@FastCompany), Scott Stratten (@unmarketing), president of UnMarketing.com, says, “You can't make something go viral. You don't decide, I don't decide, the audience does.”
If you're hoping for your latest content to go viral, it has to do one thing: evoke strong emotion. Key word there is “strong.” If someone lightly laughs at something, or is slightly inspired, that doesn’t make them jump to the “share” button. It has to be to the level of awesome. Awesomely funny, upsetting, uplifting, offensive, whatever the emotion is – it has to hit it hard.
Though evidence is accumulating that brandedness suppresses passalong, that doesn't mean brands shouldn't be both creating and curating content for their various constituencies. In fact, as we edge ever further into the Relationship Era, in which trust is the most valuable asset, providing compelling and relevant content through multiple channels is an ever-more important way to sustain connections. For instance, Betty Crocker's cake videos, pure how-to content sought out by moms wishing to bake birthday cakes shaped like dinosaurs and princesses, have been clicked on 70 million times.
And, as I've mentioned before, there is a huge, untapped opportunity for a brand to pass along found video to its various circles, much in the way any friend would.
Finally, brands can be part of larger movements, when those enterprises reside in the common ground shared by the brand and its customers
Wieden + Kennedy's (@WiedenKennedy) production of the universally heartwarming “Thank you, Mom” campaign for Procter & Gamble (@ProcterGamble) originally launched for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Its messaging continues for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London with “Best Job,” a cinematic and emotional anthem. It has achieved more than 5 million views online and it won 5 Lions at Cannes last month, including golds in Film and Film Craft. Adweek (@Adweek) says:
The new spot is a beautiful testament to parents around the world who have helped their children through the grueling daily grind toward becoming an Olympic athlete.
The tagline of the online-only ad is, “The hardest job in the world is the best job in the world.”
Its new companion video spot, “Kids” (already reaching 1.7 million views), has a similar heart-tugging payout at the end:
What makes these videos so effective and viral? They’re
·beautifully filmed, directed, and edited
·poignant
·emotional
·brief
·relevant
·able to draw the viewer in to self-identify with the message.
Twitter will have staff monitoring Olympic-related tweets from athletes, coaches, Olympics officials, NBC personalities and others and curating the best content surrounding the #Olympics hashtag on a single page.
NBC will promote the page and the hashtag during its on-air coverage across each of the networks providing coverage, including in primetime coverage on NBC itself.
Russian publisher Lamartis (@lamartis) says it strives to combine all the elements that make books timeless, majestic, and beautiful. It positions its books for “sophisticated art connoisseurs and book collectors” and creates books for “the adornment of public, corporate, and home libraries.” The above video wonderfully captures the artistic craftsmanship of the Lamartis method.
The above video demonstrates the value of a company taking a consumer’s question seriously and answering it honestly. A consumer askedMcDonald’s (@McDonalds), “Why does your food look different in the advertising than what is in the store?”
The hamburger chain responded with a behind-the-scenes tour of a McDonald's Canada photo shoot showing how Watt International (@Wattisretail) preps a Quarter Pounder to look edible for ads. In 3 days, the 3½ minute viral video had 3.5 million views.
Lesson? Answer your customers’ questions with transparency and it will contribute to your brand’s positive reputation.
Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategize public relations and produce videos that effectively communicate your brand’s message to your target audience.
TechJournal South (@TJ_South) reports on a new University of California, Davis (@ucdavis) study of “buzz” marketing on YouTube that says the quality of videos aren’t as important as “seeding” them to influential people (bloggers, tweeters, etc.).
The study’s author, Hema Yoganarasimhan, professor at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, says seeding information in social media outlets through handpicked agents is crucial.
“It’s not the number of people; it’s focusing on the right people,” she explains. “They need to ask who are their friends, and who are their friends’ friends — and how are they positioned in the network?”
While a close-knit community may be committed and loyal to a dispenser of information, that community may generate low video popularity in the long run, the study showed. That’s because people in a close-knit community don’t interact much with outsiders, resulting in few interactions with 2nd- or 3rd-degree “friends.”
The study says video ratings are important — but it doesn’t much matter if the rating is good or bad. Yoganarasimhan’s analysis shows that video quality, as measured by viewer comments and ratings, have little effect on viewership in the long run. However a video with any rating is likely to have more viewers than one with no rating.
Why would a 2-minute video (created by the Canadian forestry machinery maker Hakmet) of a machine cutting and splitting tree trunks go viral with more than 3 million views? Is it the hypnotic combination of lilting music, buzz saw noise, and captivating visual rhythm? Probably.
It reminds us of another hearty industrial company’s viral video success: Blendtec’s (@Blendtec) “Will it Blend” campaign. The video below of an iPad being destroyed in a blender has more than 13 million views. Wow.
He says the best explainer videos answer the question “How does this product fit into my life?” or “Why should I use this?” before they answer “How does this work?”.
This video, highlighting the history of the WWII British government poster “Keep Calm and Carry On,” has gotten nearly 1 million views in less than a month. The original war slogan was all but forgotten until a poster was discovered in 2000 in a box of books bought by Barter Books (@BarterBooks), a large second-hand bookshop in north-east England. In a bit of alchemy, the store has turned those 5 words into word-of-mouth gold.
