The Secret Strategies Behind Many "Viral" Videos. Update: Dan has a follow up to this post, here.
This guest post was written by Dan Ackerman Greenberg, co-founder of viral video marketing company The Comotion Group and lead TA for the Stanford Facebook Class. Dan will graduate from the Stanford Management Science & Engineering Masters program in June. Have you ever watched a video with 100,000 views on YouTube and thought to yourself: “How the hell did that video get so many views?” Chances are pretty good that this didn’t happen naturally, but rather that some company worked hard to make it happen – some company like mine.
When most people talk about “viral videos,” they’re usually referring to videos like Miss Teen South Carolina, Smirnoff’s Tea Partay music video, the Sony Bravia ads, Soulja Boy – videos that have traveled all around the internet and been posted on YouTube, MySpace, Google Video, Facebook, Digg, blogs, etc. – videos with millions and millions of views. Secret #1: Not all viral videos are what they seem 2. Follow Up To The Viral Video Post: Dan Wants Another Word. Dan Greenberg took a bit of a beating in his guest post earlier this week where he revealed his strategies for taking a client’s otherwise ho-hum video and making it go viral.
Readers were incensed over his almost gleeful willingness to post fake discussions on forums between fake readers, pay bloggers to post videos, and other dishonest tactics. I, for one, agreed with most of those commenters. He’s requested that we allow a follow up so that he can rephrase and clarify some of those statements. We agreed, and his follow up is below. At one point Dan says “The original post was framed quite differently, but after going through the TechCrunch editorial filter, it ended up sounding like a tell-all about our shady business practices.” To all of who who’ve commented, positive and negative: thanks for being part of the first round of a much longer discussion. The internet is changing, and it seems that my post has really struck a nerve. We do NOT spam email lists.
Dan Ackerman Greenberg. La sporca verità dietro i video virali: ecco come fregare YouTube e far diventare un proprio video un successo. « Tommaso Tessarolo. Il post scritto da Dan Ackerman Greenberg co-fondatore della viral video marketing company “The Comotion Group” e pubblicato da TechCrunch (qui e chiarimenti qui) è di quelli che fanno accapponare la pelle.
Non che alla fine della lettura si abbia rivelata una realtà che non si immaginava ma, come per molti fatti che riguardano l’establishment di questo paese, un conto è sospettarlo e parlarne al bar, altro è avere una testimonianza esatta di quel che succede. Cosa racconta di tanto sconvolgente Dan? Le modalità operative con cui la sua società riesce a trasformare un qualsiasi video in un super successo su YouTube. Il racconto parte con la storia di alcuni video prodotti da una major di Hollywood con grandissimo dispendio di risorse, postati su YouTube e puntualmente ignorati dalla massa di visitatori del sito. Perché? 1. 2. 3. Blog, contattare i blog di maggiore successo e pagarli per pubblicare il nostro video. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.