the constant skeptic

Ok…

I have had enough of TVweek’s daily viral videos. I am sick of “Ask a Ninja” making money hand over karate chopping fist..

How does a video go viral?

Want to make your brand stand out from the crowd by starting a simple viral video campaign?

Think the following: small, funny, cross cultural, and simple.

SMALL:

The best videos that have gained the most views are short, typically one minute or less.

FUNNY:

Comedy is one of the best means to get through to a tough audience. Funny things on the Internet spread like wildfire because everyone loves to share a joke with friends via emails, myspace, digg, facebook, stumbleupon, clipmarks, etc.

SIMPLE

I am sorry, but lip-syncing to the milk and cereal song is ridiculously simple. The only creative effort involved is how to make yourself look interesting and funny on camera.

CROSS CULTURAL:

Things like food, soccer, bloopers, accidents, bodily functions are cross cultural, meaning they represent the general human condition independent of cultural or sociological memes. This is a must for your video to be a success and reach an audience outside of your host country.

mashable has a great post about the need to plan ahead before planning online video production to make money:

“Creators usually need at least 50,000 to 100,000 views per month before advertisers will take them seriously,” said Dina Kaplan, chief operating officer and co-founder at video-sharing site BlipTV.

HERE IS THE TYPICAL PAY-OUT BREAKDOWN FOR A POPULAR WEB SHOW:

“Ad pricing varies widely for popular Web shows, but can range from $15 to $20 [CPM or income per 1000 viewers],” said Angela Gyetvan, VP of marketing and content at Revver. “That means a show generating 50,000 views at a $15 CPM (cost per thousand views) would make about $750.”

ok, time for some rudimentary math:

given 1: the funnier the video is, the greater the potential and speed of viral spread

HR (humor rating) can be calculated by performing a quick machine generated analysis on the sentiment of the comments being posted in response to video. Positive sentiment along with a few choice words like “hilarious”, or “LMAO” will up the HR at a specific rate.

given 2: the more cultural non-specific the video is, the broader the reach

MCR (multi-culture rating) can be calculated by analyzing the tags of the video. The higher the number of culture specific tags, the lower the rating and the inverse is also true.

given 3: the shorter the video, the more potential it has to go viral

LR (length rating - duh) is simply how short the video is, so the shorter the video, the higher the rating, and this can be weighted to a certain degree to affect the final number.

SR (simplicity rating) can be calculated by the number of spoken words or phrases in the video, and / or the number of musical instruments, characters, scene changes, etc. So the higher the number of these factors, the less the rating will be.

thus:

HR * .50 + MCR *.25 + LR * .15 + SR * .10 = virulence rating

(or how much potential this video has of going viral in the online environment)

so humor is weighed the most and then cross-culturalness and then length and then simplicity…..

ok, I hope you enjoyed the post… I know this explanation is not perfect, please critique and provide me with some feedback.

Good luck in making your videos viral!