How to Go Viral on YouTube in 2021 - 6 Tips You Need to Consider!

Who doesn’t want to go viral? Imagine your ad or company video getting millions of views, comments, and shares. Obviously, this will give your brand an amazing outreach and massive awareness at no additional expense. But with 400 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, going viral is a massive challenge.

What does it mean to go viral?

YouTube videos now get billions of hours of watch time each day. So what exactly is a viral video by today’s standards? As the name suggests, going viral means spreading among multiple people in a short amount of time. To be precise, your video has to gain a few million views in less than a week to be considered viral. 

Tips to go viral on YouTube

Before we go into the actual tips, let me start with a disclaimer: there is no easy way to go viral on YouTube (or anywhere else). If someone tells you they can help you get millions of views in a couple of days at no expense and without any effort, they are lying to you. What we offer here are not hacks and shortcuts, but rather best practices that you can employ to increase your chances of success. At the end of the day, going viral requires a lot of luck – and there is no formula for that. It might also require several attempts, so don’t get discouraged if you don’t succeed the first, second, or third time.

Tip 1: Craft the perfect message 

People love watching videos that provide a certain value to them and they are more likely to share a video if they think it will provide value for other people. This value can be to learn something new, to impress an audience, or to simply have fun. So your intention should be to help your viewers – educate them, inspire them, or make them laugh. In order for you to do that, however, you need to know your audience. If your task is to make them laugh, you have to know what it is they find funny. If you want to help them overcome a challenge, you have to be aware of what that challenge is. Getting to know your audience and understanding what they want to see will aid you in crafting your video’s message.

Tip 2: Make it short and sweet

When you compete for people’s attention with billions of other videos, you only have a couple of minutes to work with. And if you don’t grab your viewers’ attention in the first few seconds, they are very likely to click away. This means your video needs to be short, concise, and start strong. We highly recommend that you try to go under a minute and mention your strongest point in the first 5 seconds.

Tip 3: Focus on the essential message

Once you have crafted your message, it’s time to hammer it home. When you have less than a minute to do so, you need to be focused and straightforward. Don’t bore the viewer with the details, go directly to the problem and its solution. 

Tip 4: Provide value 

This tip is directly connected with the motivation people have to watch and share a video. When you simply want to entertain, this is essentially the value that you’re offering. But how about if you’re trying to sell? In this case, you have to make sure people that watch your video understand the value. Make sure your value is:

• Affordable
• Easy to understand
• Solves a specific problem 

You can cover the above requirements by doing the following preliminary work (before you make the video itself):

• List all the pain points of your audience you can think of 
• List all the things you can do to help alleviate those pain points 
• Pick a common pain point and your best service and create engaging content around that. 

Speaking of value, we too have something that you might find valuable – our eBook “6 Truths No Video Production Company Will Dare Tell You”. In it, we discuss things such as how to determine the cost of a video and what to look for in a creative team. You can download this eBook for free below.

Tip 5: Make it catchy 

Even if your video is valuable, people won’t share it if it’s boring or not memorable. That is why you have to make it catchy. There are many ways to do it, but the main ones are to make it clever, fun, or provocative. This will make the video shareable – people would want to send it to someone to make them laugh or think so they would discuss it later. This step is tricky, as it requires putting in some time, creativity, and humor or hiring a creative team to help your video stand out.

Tip 6: Thumbnail, Title, and SEO

Once you create the perfect video, it’s time to make people click on it. This is done with the help of an attractive thumbnail and a great title. 

The title needs to invite people and spark their interest. However, you need to make sure not to mislead the viewers. Don’t use clickbait titles that have nothing to do with the content of the video. This will make your audience quickly bounce off or even flag your video.

The same goes for the thumbnail. Don’t just use a screenshot. Make it interesting: add text and graphics to make it stand out. 

In order to attract more views and make your YouTube go viral, you need to pay special attention to the video’s search engine optimization. We have posted an article to help you learn more and improve your video SEO. Follow the steps there and you will get closer to going viral. 

We have worked with hundreds of businesses – from giant corporations to small tech start-ups. Some of the videos we’ve produced have gone viral, others have not. There is no one-size-fits-all formula that will ensure you will go viral on YouTube – you are unique, your business and content are also one of a kind. So try to apply the tips above to create your own, unique strategy for going viral. If you need any help with that, don’t hesitate to drop us an email and claim your free strategy. 

There’s a lot of video production companies out there that promise they’ll create a viral video for you. This is just one of the myths that we bust in our short eBook “6 Truths No Video Production Company Will Dare Tell You”. If you’re considering hiring a studio to produce a video ad for you, this eBook will help you spot the possible red flags.