The Beginner's Guide to Viral Marketing (Episode 1 of 5)

By Saskia Wilson-Brown, originally for Current TV

Congratulations! You have succeeded in making a video, and have successfully uploaded it to one of many fine online video hosting sites. That, for some of us, may feel like an achievement in itself. 
 
But let’s get real for a second: So what? 

It only counts if people see it.
 
Be it a short documentary, an indie animation, a video blog or even a slide show of your niece’s 3rd birthday party (and we sincerely hope it’s not the latter), there are tons of ways that you can maximize your audience and help turn your video into a viral hit. 
 
This is a 5-part weekly blog series that will provide an introduction on how to best get eyeballs to your content. Simple.

Episode 1 follows.  Catch other episodes here:

• Episode 1
• Episode 2
• Episode 3
• Episode 4 
• Episode 5 

EPISODE 1 - An orientation to your video online.

I. Allow us to state the obvious.

Once you’ve uploaded it, your video lives on what is often called an item page, or a video page. 

Item page functionality varies from site to site, but always houses the video file in the video player. It also houses embed code, a direct link url, a description of your video and the video’s tags. The item page is also the place where your friends or haters will come to leave snarky comments, rate your video, leave webcam feedback, post mash-ups, post fan art, and post links to relevant websites. 

Video pages are also often organized into topics, playlists, channels or other grouping systems. The tags that you add when you upload the video file can in some cases become topic subjects, but in most instances, you can also manually add tags later. In some cases, on Vimeo, for instance, in addition to adding tags, you can search their channels and add your video. By adding your video to channels, people interested in a given topic will have a higher chance of seeing your video when browsing the site. 

II. Explaining basic video page functionality

• Rating buttons: The rating buttons are the buttons your viewers can click on that will get your video higher or lower ratings. Pretty simple. They also often affect your placement on playlists, and can allow for greater potential for visibility. 

• ‘Embed’ codes: The embed code is what allows you to post your video to your profile on social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, etc. They can usually be found near or on the video player, or in a ‘menu’ section right beneath the video player.

• Tags: The more tags you add to your video, the higher the chances people will find it. Be  creative. A video about cats can be tagged, for instance, to many more words than just  ‘cat’ (to wit: furry, pets, housepets, tabby, felines, tomcat, purring, meowing, allergy, woman’s best friend). These tags also help you with SEO (search engine optimization), allowing your video to pop up when someone does a web search for a given term. The temptation might be to tag the video to such hot-button topics as Britney Spears or whatnot, but resist. Dishonesty gives your content a bad rap, and it will make you look unprofessional. 

• Share button: When you click a share button, it will take you to a series of links that you can use to help your friends to find the video, or - oftentimes - ways to post it right away to Facebook, Digg, Bebo, Myspace and other sites. 

• Favorite Button:  This allows viewers to favorite your video, in other words to bookmark it for future viewing. The more favorites you have, the better your video is doing.

Easy, right? Consider yourself oriented to your video’s online home. 

Next week: The first steps towards becoming a viral superstar