Viral MarketingI’d like to share a strategy that can get you on to the first page of Google within 24hours and generate significant amounts of traffic to your website.

This method is actually a synergy of viral marketing and video marketing techniques, so let’s start by looking at each of these components separately…

Viral marketing

Viral marketing is basically about “word of mouth”.

People see great content and use communication methods such as email, Facebook or Twitter to pass it along to their friends, colleagues and contacts. If the content is good enough then those people pass it on too and an iterative process begins which becomes explosive!

The exciting thing about viral marketing is that it works not only for multi-million pound advertising campaigns such as the “Cadbury’s Gorilla” TV advert (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnzFRV1LwIo) but also for ordinary people (like you and me!) creating content at home. A great example of the latter are the videos made by Peter Oakley, an 84-year-old pensioner from Leicester under the YouTube pseudonym “geriatric1927”. You can check out his content here: http://www.youtube.com/user/geriatric1927.

However, the BIG problem with viral marketing as a traffic strategy is that it is incredibly difficult to manufacture content that will go viral.

The process is very hit-and-miss and we could even say that viral content happens essentially by chance.

A great way around this is to “piggyback” existing viral content. This way we remove a great deal of the hit-and-miss nature of viral marketing and concentrate on factors which are directly under our control.

Video marketing

If you’ve ever tried to gain higher rankings in the search engines (aka Search Engine Optimisation or SEO) in order to generate traffic, then you’ll know that the process can be extremely time intensive and often takes months to become effective.

In my view, traditional SEO is getting harder by the day… the number of websites in existence has exploded in the last two to three years thanks, in part, to the proliferation of “Web 2.0” properties such as blogs, Squidoo Lenses and HubPages which have made it incredibly easy for anyone to get their own web property.

But the double whammy is that Google continues to favour “authority” sites with each of its infamous algorithm updates.

However, these issues are largely confined to content in text format such as articles and blog posts for which the competition is becoming increasingly fierce.

A great solution to this competition problem is to turn to videos, which are much easier to rank in the search engines.

The viral-video synergy

By “piggybacking” video marketing with viral marketing we get the following benefits:

1. Siphon off traffic from existing viral videos

2. Videos are easy and quick to make

3. Compared to text articles we can rank much higher

in Google in a shorter amount of time Ranking videos on the first page of Google within 24 hours

To introduce the complete strategy, let’s take a look at a method I’ve used to create and rank a video on the first page of Google within 24 hours.

Step 1: Find a long-tail key phrase in your niche

Long-tail key phrases are Google search terms that only receive a small number of searches per day.

Whilst you will never receive a ton of traffic from targeting these long-tail key phrases, you can gain small amounts of passive traffic on an ongoing basis. This can really add up over time and so it’s well worth considering for the small amount of work necessary to do this.

Also, the competition for long-tail key phrases tends to be much lower than for high-volume key phrases. What is more, the competition is even less than usual if you make videos as opposed to text articles!

So this first step involves using a tool such as Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com) or the Google Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) to find search terms in your niche that have search volumes between 500 and 1,500 searches per month.

Step 2: Create a slide presentation

Here you need to create a small number of slides (five to ten is fine) which contain some relevant and helpful content that is related to the search term you have chosen to target.

To do this you can use Microsoft PowerPoint, Keynote (for the Mac) or free presentation software (just search Google for this). Go to http://sxc.hu to grab some royalty free images to make your slideshow more attractive.

Also, brand your slides with the web address of the site you want to send traffic to. Simply add the URL as a footer on each slide and include a call to action on the last slide in the series encouraging people to pay your site a visit.

Step 3: Turn your presentation into a video

You can do this very easily using screencast software such as Camtasia. I personally use this and I highly recommend it. You can try it out for free here: http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.

Alternatively, try one of the free alternatives such as authorSTREAM (http://www.authorstream.com) or Screencast-o-Matic (http://www.screencast-o- matic.com).

Step 4: Upload to YouTube

If you don’t already have a YouTube account then you can sign up for free in just a few seconds. It is very easy to get started and upload a video.

Step 5: Add some music

I should point out that YouTube strongly disapproves of using copyrighted music on videos. In fact, it has an extremely clever “listening” algorithm that scans your videos automatically after you upload them!

For this reason, don’t be tempted to use music by your favourite band as the chances are YouTube will disallow your video.

Instead, you can use YouTube’s inbuilt AudioSwap feature to add a royalty-free soundtrack to your video.

Step 6: Optimise the video

It is critical to get this step right otherwise you’ll likely end up on page 57 of Google rather than page 1!

There are five things that you should do at this stage:

1. Ensure that the long-tail key phrase you’re targeting is in the title of the video (preferably at the beginning).

2. Place a link to your website (or whatever location you want to send traffic to) in the first line of the description. This will ensure that the link is still visible and clickable when the video plays without the viewer having to expand the “Show More” section that is displayed below your YouTube video.

3. Fill out the description field with at least 400 words of text relating to the topic of the video.

You might be surprised at this recommendation as most YouTube videos have relatively short descriptions. However, I have a marketing contact that personally tested this and he has found that longer descriptions lead to better optimisation and ultimately, better Google rankings. To make this step faster you could repurpose some of the text that you used for your presentation slides and use it directly in the description field.

After writing the main description include a section at the bottom which starts with, “This video is also about:” followed by a list of five to ten closely related key phrases. You can find suitable ideas for this from the Goole Keyword Tool.

A niche I’ve been recently investigating is raw food so using this as an example, our main key phrase could be “raw food recipe” which according to the Google Keyword Tool, receives around 1,000 exact searches per month:

Looking down the list gives us plenty of related keywords to insert into the description field of our YouTube Video:

Screen Shot 2014-04-25 at 14.31.39

4. Select the correct category for your video and choose “Allow comments automatically”. Comments are an important factor in how videos are ranked both inside YouTube itself and in Google search returns, and doing this will ensure that all comments get posted immediately below the video.

Step 7: That’s it!

In my case, the steps above were enough to get my video on the first page of Google within 24 hours.

However, depending upon the key phrase you select, the number of existing YouTube videos dedicated to your topic and the specific competition level, results will obviously be different. For example, you might find yourself catapulted to number one immediately or disappointingly relegated to page 2 or 3.

For this reason, we are now going to look at more tactics which will give you greater control over the outcome of this method plus some additional ideas for “piggybacking” existing viral videos…

Viral video piggybacking

As we mentioned earlier, creating your own viral content is a very haphazard business so leveraging the power of existing viral content – or piggybacking as we shall call it – is a much safer bet.

To do this with YouTube we first need to find existing videos that have gone viral. This can be done in a number of ways:

1. YouTube Charts

(http://www.youtube.com/charts) This service gives you a list of videos that have received the highest number of views in a particular category over a specified period of time. This is a great provision from YouTube and one that is self-fulfilling in the sense that once a video makes it onto these lists the chances are it will receive even more views in the future!

2. Viral Video Chart

(http://viralvideochart.unrulymedia.com) According to owner Unruly Media, this is the

World’s largest and most comprehensive database of online videos. It provides a similar list to YouTube charts except that videos are ranked by the amount of activity on Facebook and Twitter. Given the increasing popularity of these social networks and the fact that this chart is used by the likes of The Guardian, TVGuide and Sky, it makes a great deal of sense to pay close attention to high ranking videos on this site.

3. YouTube Trends

(http://youtube-trends.blogspot.com) This blog is a nice complement to the previous two services mentioned above as it includes commentary on the videos covered – excellent for generating ideas and identifying themes that are trending well in the online video world.

After identifying a video relevant to your niche, the next step is to post a video response. You can do this by clicking in the Comments box below the video and then selecting “Create a video response”:

Then select the video from your account that you’d like to respond with.

Obviously, your video needs to be relevant to the topic of the one that you’re responding to. You can create your video following the steps we discussed previously or alternatively use a webcam to record a response.

If you decide upon the second option then don’t think that you need to spend a lot of time creating an extensive response; some of the best responses are just a few seconds long where the person says what they like about the original video and adds a couple of thoughts of their own.

If you want to take a look at some examples of YouTube video responses then go to Google and type in:

site:youtube.com “This video is a response to”

At the bottom of the video you’ll find a link marked as “This video is a response to” and then the link to the original video.

Piggybacking SEO

When creating a video response to a viral video you can follow the tips we discussed previously about the description and links. However, there are some additional things that you can do which will significantly increase your chances of ranking well in Google and YouTube and maximising the traffic you get back to your own website.

1. Emulate the title and tags from the viral video

When it comes to the title, you don’t have to copy it exactly but try to include the main phrases and keywords that are included. For example, if it is entitled “Yoga For Beginners – A Simple Guide” then you will want to include “Yoga For Beginners” in your title too. If you like you can use the Google Keyword Tool in order to find out popular search phrases but just using your common sense and intuition is absolutely fine.

Next, go to the viral video and click on the “Show More” section below it. There you will find a list of tags. Copy these exactly into your own video.

Emulating the title and tags like this will vastly increase your chances of appearing in the “Suggestions” list that appears in the right-hand sidebar of YouTube when people are watching the original viral video. Another great way of gaining popularity and traffic!

2. Build some backlinks

Many marketers build backlinks to their other web properties but very rarely to their videos hosted on services like YouTube. This fact alone makes it almost a no-brainer to create a small number of backlinks so that you can stand above the rest in SEO terms.

Some quick-and-easy ways of building links to your videos are:

• Blog commenting

• Submitting articles to article directories

• Creating a Web 2.0 property such as Squidoo or HubPages

• Posting on Twitter or Facebook • Posting links on social bookmarking sites like

StumbleUpon or Delicious

Even if you build just one link it will be worth it since no one else ever seems to bother!

3. Syndicate your video

So far we have focused exclusively on YouTube since it is “the daddy” when it comes to video hosting. Also, Google owns it and therefore it likes to rank YouTube videos well in its search engine results pages.

However, there are many other video hosting sites out there, Vimeo, Yahoo! Video, etc. You can submit your video to them manually or use a partially automated solution.

A full discussion of the latter would mean us going off on a bit of a tangent in this article, but if you would like to know more then I would suggest checking out Tube Mogul, Traffic Geyser or simply searching Google for “video syndication”.

4. Use fiverr.com

If you haven’t ever visited fiverr.com then please do so immediately! It is unbelievable (and quite scary in some cases) what people are willing to do for $5…

When it comes to improving the rankings of your video, fiverr.com can be a useful resource. There are gigs (the name given to jobs) where people will add views, comments, likes and shares to your videos. YouTube and Google take into account all of these in its rankings so this is a great option that you might like to consider.

I’ve used fiverr.com several times myself and although I haven’t been “stung” yet (touch wood!), my only recommendation is to be careful to ensure that you select a provider with a decent amount of positive feedback.

It’s a wrap!

If you’ve never made an online video before then my advice is to overcome your apprehensions and just do it! You don’t need to spend a great deal of money on equipment and as I showed you earlier in the article you can even get on the first page of Google by just converting a slide presentation and adding some simple music.

Good luck with your viral-video traffic generation!