How to Make a Viral Video – Ultimate Guide

What Is a Viral Video?

A viral video is a video that spreads rapidly and becomes popular through a viral process of Internet sharing, usually through video hosting sites, social media, and email.

Some of the viral videos are original, and occasionally received a lot of attention and reposting to form a viral spread; and some commercial short films caused emotional resonance with the audience through creative packaging, thus achieving viral spread. The latter is consciously created and planned by advertisers.

In terms of production style, viral videos are usually very humorous. In addition to some wonderful original scripts, they also include numerous adapted works.

How to Make a Video Go Viral?

Nowadays, viral videos can be seen everywhere, but it is difficult to determine what makes a video virus. By studying a large number of viral videos, we found that most viral videos have something in common. Here are some practical tips that may increase the chance of your video becoming viral video.

1. Be Consistent with Current Affairs

When making a video, understand what is happening in the world, and then see if your video can be connected to it. Keep up to date with current events, hot topics, and even popular meme formats so that you can stack your content on the trend when relevant content is popular.

2. Give an Accurate Headline

One of the most important elements in a video is the headline. Your video title should be a summary of the video content so that the audience can quickly understand the topic of your video. Therefore, choose a title that inspires curiosity to make sure viewers click and watch your video. If you have no idea, you can consider using a professional video title generator.

3. Create an Eye-Catching Thumbnail

Whether your video is on the organic search results page or the social media platforms that do not use autoplay, all it displayed is its thumbnail. Therefore, your video thumbnail largely determines whether viewers click on your videos. There are many video thumbnail makers on the Internet that you can try. If possible, avoid using fonts that are not easily identifiable.

4. Be Creative in Content

Creativity is a necessity for a viral video and directly affects whether the viewers share it. The more surprising a thing, the faster and more often we will share it with others. Therefore, only creativity can guarantee the widespread and dissemination of a video.

5. Keep it Short and Simple

Do you know? The human attention span is even shorter than that of goldfish! How long does a viral video take to keep the audience’s attention while having enough time to convey the message?

Wistia once found that a two-minute video can generate excellent engagement. If you can keep the video duration within 120 seconds, you can attract viewers to the maximum.

Also read: How to Download Wistia Videos

6. Elicit High-Arousal Emotions

Emotions can also help the spread of viral videos. When your video evokes the emotions in someone, there is an unseen bond being established. High arousal emotions (such as happiness and anger) are more likely to be spread than low arousal emotions (such as sadness and boredom). Besides, positive videos are more likely to be spread than negative videos. 

7. Add a Call to Action

Including a call to action in your video is another way to make your video go viral. Whether it is to convey goodwill or express anger, viewers should be encouraged to do something after watching to increase engagement, otherwise, once they watch the next video, they may forget yours. For example, the popular ice bucket challenge was launched in the name of charity.

8. Publish on Weekdays

The timing of uploading your video is significant to make it viral. If your goal is to spread the virus, you may need to post the video on weekdays to give it the whole week to gain momentum. Why choose working days? That’s because many people browse the Internet while resting or even working. Also, avoid posting videos on holidays unless your content is related to the holidays.

9. Utilize All of Your Platforms

To make your video go viral, you cannot just post it in one place. Instead, you can use all your social media platforms for advertising. However, you may need to edit the video to match different social platforms, as most of them have their own format requirements.

Related article: How to Make Animated Videos

Best Viral Video Maker

The above has introduced how to make a video go viral. What if you have a great idea but do not have the skills to make a high-quality video. Don’t worry. Here are 3 excellent video makers that can help you make impressive viral videos, even if you do not have professional editing skills.

MiniTool MovieMaker

Compatibility: Windows

Price: Free

MiniTool MovieMakerClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

MiniTool MovieMaker is a 100% free video maker without watermarks.

With a simple and intuitive interface, it is designed for Windows users to create stylish videos through its large collection of effects, transitions, motions, texts as well as audio tracks.

The best part of the program is that it provides you with two completely different choices – make a video with its built-in video templates or make a video with your characteristics. Whatever you choose, the quality of the output videos is guaranteed.

Make videos using movie templates is rather helpful for the novice. Just choose a suitable template, import your footage (image/audio/video) and then the program will create a cool video automatically. In contrast, if you are willing to make a video from the scratch, you are allowed to do more customizations.

Features:

• Create videos with movie templates
• Huge stock of transitions, effects, and motions
• Support a wide range of video/audio/image file formats
• Split, trim, and combine video/audio/GIF files
• Add animated text (titles, captions, and credits) to video
• Change video/GIF speed
• Reverse, rotate, and flip video/GIF
• Fade in/out audio
• Add background music to video
• Color correction
• Change video resolution
• Convert video format

MiniTool MovieMaker is the best option for Windows users to make viral videos!Click to Tweet

iMovie

Compatibility: macOS & iOS

Price: Free

To make a viral video on Mac, iMovie is definitely the best option.

It is the video maker tool built-in iOS and macOS, combining professional trailers and themes, abundant special effects, and an easy-to-use interface.

iMovie’s drag and drop interface makes it quick to move and edit video clips. One of the most impressive features is its green-screen or chroma-key tool, which allows you to change the video background.

With it, you can easily create Hollywood-style trailers as well as stunning 4K-resolution movies with no hassle. And you can even shoot video footage on an iPhone, edit it on an iPad, and then use Airdrop to wirelessly transfer your project over to your Mac.

Features:

• Video effects & transitions
• Add animated titles and credits to videos
• Built-in music, sound effects, and voiceover recording
• Crop & rotate video
• Stabilize shaky video
• Change video speed
• Fade in/out audio
• Add green screen effect
• Split screen
• Detach audio
• Adjust video color
• Support 4K video resolution

Clipchamp

Compatibility: Web-based

Price: Free & Paid

Have you ever thought to make a viral video online? Then you can try Clipchamp.

Clipchamp is an online video maker without watermarks. You can access it from any desktop device, and there’s no need to worry about your device storage. It has almost every video-related feature built-in, so you don’t have to go anywhere else to perform other tasks.

It has a user-friendly interface and provides you with a huge library where you can access numerous videos, animated backgrounds, music tracks, and sound effects and use them in your video project. All of these digital assets will appear with a watermark if you access them through a free account.  

Additionally, the site offers several different ratios for you to choose from and enables you to export your project in different video resolutions (420p, 720p, and 1080p). However, you can only download your video at 480p for free.

Features:

• Work on any computer
• Make slideshow video
• Create Facebook/Instagram video ads
• Add audio to video
• Trim and cut video
• Split and combine video
• Flip and mirror video
• Rotate video
• Crop video
• Compress video
• Customizable video templates
• Edit green screen video
• AI voice over generator
• Create picture-in-picture video
• Audio visualizer
• Video meme generator
• Record screen/webcam
• Convert video in a flash

Bottom Line

This guide has details 9 practical tips on how to make a video go viral and 3 excellent viral video makers for you to choose from. It’s your turn. If you have any questions or suggestions about MiniTool MovieMaker, please let us know via [email protected] or share them in the comments section below.

Viral Video FAQ