The secret strategies of viral marketers seems to have caused considerable upset among the Techcrunch faithful, registering 444 comments to date. Clearly author Dan Ackerman Greenberg hit something of a nerve with the 2.0 faithful. Many readers, including head honcho Michael Arrington, seem to be very naive about what marketers are going to do with sites that allow individuals to vote up stories, videos and sites. Arrington says, “frankly I’m disgusted by this”: quite an odd stance from the site’s editor – why did he publish the piece, then?
Personally, I thought the article offered some really useful information for anyone submitting a video to get it noticed among the other 19,999 videos submitted to YouTube on any given day. The initial tips for creating videos that appeal should be written on the bedroom walls of some of the aspiring ‘film-makers’ that appear on the site:
- Make it short: 15–30 seconds is ideal; break down long stories into bite-sized clips
- Design for remixing: create a video that is simple enough to be remixed over and over again by others. Ex: “Dramatic Hamster”
- Don’t make an outright ad: if a video feels like an ad, viewers won’t share it unless it’s really amazing. Ex: Sony Bravia
- Make it shocking: give a viewer no choice but to investigate further. Ex: “UFO Haiti”
- Use fake headlines: make the viewer say, “Holy shit, did that actually happen?!” Ex: “Stolen Nascar”
- Appeal to sex: if all else fails, hire the most attractive women available to be in the video. Ex: “Yoga 4 Dudes”
Anyway, those who were shocked might want to Google ‘viral marketing agency‘ or ‘buzz marketing‘ and peruse some of the 1,980,000 results. What was it that you thought these people did?
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