Page 186 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

Viral seeding involves sharing your video in a very targeted way to increase its
shareability (if that’s a word). Those elements can include the following:

» Targeting influencers: People who are influential in that category may
comment to their audience about the video content, either online or off.
These can be YouTube influencers or other types of social media influencers.

» Creating resonance: Anchoring the videos in deep, global, human truths that
everyone can relate to increases the video’s chances of going viral. This
matters especially if the human truths are powerful ones that your customers
subscribe to and want to endorse.
» Placing it on social networks: Links to the video start showing up in tweets,
Facebook posts, and other venues. Don’t forget Twitter and Instagram either,
which have evolved into strong platforms for video distribution.

» Emailing it to popular lists: Popular newsletters may include a link to the
video.
» Advertising: Video owners buy different types of advertising — Google,
YouTube, Facebook, and so on — to encourage sharing.
» Blogging: Well-known bloggers include a link to the video in one of their
posts. Most of these have a strong presence on the social media platforms
as well.
» Partnerships: Collaborating with YouTube stars who are celebrities on
YouTube with large channels to help promote the videos can help.
» Doing giveaways: Links to the video mentioning free prizes start showing up
online.

One example of viral seeding is the campaign Unilever created for its Dove brand,
as shown in Figure 10-4. In April of 2013, Unilever launched a video on YouTube
in which several women described themselves to a forensic sketch artist who
couldn’t see his subjects. The same women were then described by strangers
whom they met the previous day. The sketches were compared with the strangers’
sketches. Interestingly, it was the strangers’ sketches that were more flattering
and accurate. In a single week, the video had more than 15 million views globally.
An article on Mashable about the video was shared more than 500,000 times in
just 24 hours. One overriding reason that the video performed so well was because
it was based on a surprising universal human truth that every woman could relate
to and understand. The content was fresh, deeply emotional, and did not feel like
an ad for the beauty product at all.

170 PART 3 Reaching Your Audience via Mainstream Social Platforms