Don't "Just Do It"

Last year, the University of Nebraska State Museum came to us asking for a viral video as part of a year-long campaign to celebrate the museum's anniversary. In my opinion, you might as well have asked us to help them win the lottery. HOW do you possibly make a video go viral? It's what everyone wants but it's difficult to attain.

Chapter 13 of the Social Media Bible suggests we just, "Just Do It." I would disagree. I think you need to be much more strategic when it comes to any type of promotional campaign.

I urged the museum officials to consider their goals and what would be the most effective and efficient way to achieve them, given a limited budget. One of their goals was to increase attendance at the museum regionally. I didn't think a viral video was necessarily the best way to achieve that goal. Even if we were able to produce a viral video that was seen by millions of people, would that necessarily bring more people in the door. Would hundreds of people watching the video in Alabama or China or Canada really lead to more attendance?

A more effective and less expensive plan to increase attendance might have included strategically placed ads in regional publications and web sites.

We did end up producing a series of "viral videos" at Lincoln schools that involved children dancing with the museum "mascot", a costumed mammoth named Archie. Five videos at five different schools were produce and as of today, the five videos had 981 views. It cost about $1500 to produce the videos. Is that a success? My guess is that most of the views were from children, parents, grandparents and other family members. Lincoln children already visit the museum at least once during the school years. I don't think that series of videos probably resulted in more visits to the museum.

I do think there are tricks to making a video go viral. Dan Ackerman Greenberg, a founder of the viral video marketing company, The Comotion Group, says, when it comes to making a video go viral, "Content is not king." (Tech Crunch, http://techcrunch.com/2007/11/22/the-secret-strategies-behind-many-viral-videos/) When Greenberg's company is hired, his goal is to produce a video and get it to Youtube's "most viewed" page. He employes a number of tactics to do this, including paying people who write relevant blogs to embed the video, starting threads on forums and embedding the video and sending the video to an email list. He also has a complex system of tagging videos to make sure they "lead the viewer down the rabbit hole" to related content.

According to Greenberg, the "wild west" of viral videos is over.

"You simply can't expect to post great videos on YouTube and have them go viral on their own, even if you think you have the best videos ever," said Greenberg. "These days, achieving true virality takes serious creativity, some luck and a lot of hard work."

So don't "Just Do It". Think about it. Plan it. Work on it. And keep your fingers crossed.