Hyper-viral video in the age of social media

What’s up with that wedding video? Surely you’ve seen it – the one where they break into dance as they are coming down the aisle. As I write this, it’s only been posted for 1.5 weeks, and it already has over 12 million views!

How did it spread so fast? That’s the power of social media. When people see something compelling that they want to share, social media makes it easy to share with 100+ friends, who then share it with their friends, and sham-wow it’s all over the place!

We saw it recently with the Britain’s Got Talent video featuring Susan Boyle. The video told a story. Here was this frumpy woman everyone was mocking. The video led you to believe she was going to make a fool out of herself… and then you hear her incredible voice. Professionally produced video. Amazing, feel-good story. Add to that the power of social media – people sharing it with their friends – and it was across the Atlantic and around the world like a flash.

If you’re a B2B marketer, should you care? What are the chances that your video will get millions of views? I guess it could happen if you hit on a concept that really connects with people. But it’s much more likely that your video will only be of interest to a niche group. And that’s OK too.

We produced a video about a robotics lab at the University of Dayton which got the interest of a robotics blogger, and it now has 4,700 views. That’s no Susan Boyle, but it’s a bunch of people who probably didn’t know anything about UD before watching our video. How can you use social media to spread the word to your audience?