How to Go Viral

In this tutorial, we will be explaining, from experience, what goes viral and what videos you should be uploading.

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It’s All About the Algorithm! 

The YouTube and Facebook algorithm is the driver of the success of a video. If the algorithm doesn’t like the video, then, even with 100,000,000 followers, the video won’t perform well. The video won’t get suggested at all. But, if the algorithm likes the video, then the potential is unlimited. The algorithm looks for a few thing:

Watch time

The more time people spend watching the video, the better. If people watch only a few seconds of a 5 minute video, it is a sign the video isn’t great. For example, you might have an amazing video of a lion hunt, but if the hunt is over in the first 30 seconds and then the rest of the video is of the lions eating, chances are people will stop watching the video quite early on. 

If you have a video of an elephant attacking a rhino, and the whole video is 2 minutes, and the part where the elephant does the attacking is at 1 minute, then, most people will watch the whole video. This shows the algorithms that the video is worthwhile.

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Click-Through Rate

In essence, the video can be great, amazing, the best ever! But, if the title and thumbnail don’t do the video justice, then people won’t click through. If they don’t click through, then there are no views. Click-through rate is the ratio of people who get shown the video to how many actually watch it.

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High-Performing Types of Videos

The type of video is now the next most important part of making a wildlife video a success!

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Stories

Stories. We are looking for stories. A video with a beginning, middle and end. It’s mostly that simple. Often times, if the video is missing one of the three parts, it can affect the success of the video entirely. 

If you say you saw the world’s most incredible wild dog kill, but you only filmed the chase and the feeding, but not the takedown, the video will most likely not be shared by the viewers. Sharing is what causes a video to go viral.

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Inter-Species Interaction

A fan favorite is definitely videos showing different species interacting. 

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Low-Performing Types of Videos

Over the years, studying analytics, we have also found some consistency with the types of videos that don’t always perform so well. They definitely are some excepts, so don’t let this throw you off, but we thought we would highlight a few

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Cute and Cuddly

We find that when we post videos of cute and cuddly sightings, they get a lot of love, but not many shares. Because they don’t get many shares, views on those types of videos don’t do increase as much.

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You’ve seen the first second, you’ve seen it all

Often, we get videos of an incredible sighting, but it’s a sighting that doesn’t really change throughout the video. For example, as we mentioned above – fighting videos. When animals fight, you pretty much know what is going to happen in the video. This causes people to not watch the full video. Rare sightings are the same.

If you see a pangolin, it is super rare! Most people go their whole lives without seeing one. But, in terms of a viral video, showing a sighting of a pangolin it isn’t going to perform well.

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Compilation Videos

We used to focus on posting only stand-alone viral sightings on our channels. But, we were receiving some really great sightings that we felt was a shame we couldn’t share with the community.

So, we’ve starting combining the videos that are great, but just aren’t enough to go out on their own, into compilations. Earnings from compilations are split equally among contributors.

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Getting Demonetized

Since 2017, YouTube has introduced the concept of being demonetized. They have put together a set of rules of what they believe advertisers don’t want to show their adverts on. If a video is not advertiser-friendly, YouTube and Facebook will then limit ads to show only for those that have chosen to advertise on un-advertiser-friendly footage. This dramatically reduced the earning potential.

Unfortunately, this can get quite frustrating. It is an automated system that often gets things wrong. With YouTube and Facebook being massive companies, it isn’t easy to get a decision overruled. So, once a video is demonetized, it is most likely going to stick to that. But, we try our best to structure videos in ways that won’t get demonetized.

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Minimum Requirements for Earning

• To earn on YouTube, there are no requirements on the length of the video. However, the YouTube algorithm favors videos around 3 minutes.

• To earn on Facebook, the video needs to be over 1 minute.

• To have multiple ads on a YouTube video, the released version needs to be over 8 minutes. 

• We require unedited footage.

• We also ask to get the footage in HD or 4K.

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What are you waiting for? 

We hope this tutorial taught you something about how to go viral! Now it’s time to see if your video can go viral!