How Viral Videos Work, from “The Man” at Youtube

Promoting a viral video is almost as important as making a great video for youtube. Find out more in this great TED talk with Kevin Allocca, YouTube’s trends manager. Listen to his deep thoughts about silly web video. In this talk from TEDYouth, he shares the 4 reasons a video goes viral.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the “Sixth Sense” wearable tech, and “Lost” producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate

Check out this great post for a more in-depth analyses of the talk. Here is an excerpt from that article.

The key is a creative mind that can see the angles, understand the market within the context of the brand and available channels, then create a strategy which allows for meme/news jacking initiatives that can uitilise the momentum of trending videos. Until this happens at a core level then companies will be chasing their own tails, tentatively dipping their toes in the viral waters unsuccessfully.