The road to one million views – Craig’s intervew on our viral video including tips on producing online video content for fun or business.

Celebrating 1 million views on YouTube with an improvised bottle of Moet - for a video about an improvised cat deterrent.

Craig was recently interviewed about our viral video “How to stop cats pissing on your car”, which has recently cracked one million views on Youtube.

The interview with Web Active Media discusses the background that lead to the creation of the cat video, his thoughts on what lead to it being a massive viral success on Youtube and Craig discusses some tips for businesses and individuals for producing successful online video content.
The interview also gives some insight into the background of In Shot Productions and why we love doing what we do.

If you interested in checking out the full interview you can find it here.
If you just want to have a quick read of some of Craig insights into online video I have summarised a couple of the Q&As below:

The video is funny, clever and of course cat centric which would suggest YouTube greatness, but what do you think are key factors to it’s success?
I guess one can never be completely sure but a major aspect that many have suggested is originality. Which makes sense as the video idea came about completely organically. I didn’t set out to copy someone’s style or idea or to even create a viral video.

I also believe a major ingredient is that it has a good story structure. People are instinctively receptive to stories with a start, middle and end. The video has characters and you could even say that it has good guys and bad guys. Story structure is a point to remember when producing any video including corporate video content.

What advice would you have for SMEs thinking of producing a video or videos specifically for marketing purposes?

Firstly I think businesses shouldn’t initially think “viral video” when they think of online video marketing. Unless you have global distribution of your product or service and have a great video idea that will directly feature your product, it’s unlikely you will have many relevant leads from you video. ie. You are better having a video viewed by 100 people in your target market than 100,000 random people internationally.

For SME’s the simplest way to get started with online video marketing is to produce a conversion video. That simply can be a promotional video on your home page or even some client testimonials. It builds trust and informs people further about you whom are actively looking at products and services in your industry. This increases your conversion of leads into sales.

As a business owner you really want to look at how you can set yourself up as an “expert” in your industry and video is a great way to do this.
If you are looking at producing more regular video content this can be achieved with “how to” videos or industry news and “tips” style videos. This can generate new leads and keep you in the top of the mind of your clients.
If this is the approach you are going for as a main tip for content ideas, really think about what people actually “get” out of your product or service. For example for a camper trailer manufacturer, your target market generally isn’t that interested in say the manufacturing techniques you use or even your product range, but they are interested in travel and adventure, so you could perhaps do a series of videos detailing some popular camping destinations while only subtly featuring your products in the background of the story.

 

We would love to here your thoughts on what you think made the cat video so popular, feel free to post a comment.