How To Make A Viral Video*

Turns out I have close personal ties with someone who has the secret on how to make a video go viral. Also turns out I have close personal ties with someone who gets to spend two nights watching Marvel superhero movies and call it work.

The man I sleep with (see first footnote here) was asked to make a fan trailer for the new Avengers movie coming out on May 4th. And in that moment the balance of who had the cooler job switched. So he spent some time and cut up a 2.5 minute trailer that I really enjoy.

And it turns out a lot of other people really enjoy it too! As of today, 3 days after it's been posted, it's received almost 10,000 views. Granted that's not huge, but just imagine if 10,000 people paid attention to what you were doing. That's roughly 100 times the people that would ever give a crap about you.

I've learned two key points here, on making a video that goes viral.

#1 Partner with someone who has already laid the groundwork. Screen Rant is an online film news site that has been around for 9 years. That's roughly how long it takes to become an overnight success. Screen Rant has a heavily trafficked site with lots of committed fans who comment and share their content everywhere. By having that committed group of people watching the trailer and sharing it that multiplied the number of views significantly.

#2 Don't be afraid to be bold or controversial. Reading through the comments on either the original Screen Rant post, or the actual YouTube video you will see a general trend to either hate or love the music. There are next to no comments on the actual content of the video itself, save some quick comments like "Loved it!", "Best. Trailer. Everywhere." The longest and most well written comments are on how the music either did not fit the trailer or was epic.

*these are not guaranteed to help your video go viral, but really they can't hurt right?