A journalist and a video creator share their real-life experiences

In Five simple steps for creating a viral video I wrote about my experience sharing a video that went viral. There are some who think they’ve unlocked the science of making a viral video and many others still trying to crack the secret code. Most of us believe there’s no such thing, telling a compelling or sensational story helps but luck plays a big role.

So I asked Andy Greene, associate editor at Rolling Stone who wrote Watch Billy Joel Forget The Lyrics To ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ a couple of questions, because I wanted to understand how he chose my video. Here’s what he had to say:

@EdenSpodek I saw on setlist.fm that he flubbed a verse, so I searched YouTube for the performance.
— Andy Greene (@greeneandy) March 15, 2014

@EdenSpodek I wish I had a better answer, but I picked it because it was the first one I saw.
— Andy Greene (@greeneandy) March 15, 2014

So there you have it… the reason the video went viral was pure luck. Andy was looking for a video that captured the story and he just happened to choose mine. It also used a descriptive text so it showed up in the top of search results at that point in time.

Last week, students in the Digital Strategy Certificate program created videos for a course assignment. Hilary Darrah’s video, “Joey Loves Water” currently has 171,464 views.
I asked Hilary if she thought her video would go viral and here’s what she had to say:

“Not really. I submitted it to a cute animals website just to try for a few thousand views but this has been way more than I ever expected!”

Apparently, people never tire of watching cute cats videos.
What type of videos do you like to watch? Please share your tips for creating compelling videos.