It was not too long ago when a camera that could shoot broadcast quality video filled a large suitcase and cost as much as a new Mercedes. With the pricing and bulk of the newest professional video cameras plummeting precipitously, the latest generation of devices the size of a thick slice of bread and priced at just a few hundred dollars can allow anyone to shoot video right up to network TV standards.

Video has swiftly become a leading tool for online marketers everywhere, but there are still more brands that get it wrong than right: instead of producing a quality video that is inherently viral they end up with snoozefests that are widely ignored.

So out of Left Field that Viewers Can’t Help but Share the Video

First of all, your video has to be interesting, different, unique, a bit quirky and wholly crafted from the ground up to be conducive to that all-important virality. All of the best social media promotions in the cyberverse won’t mean a thing unless the video itself lives up to the billing. Many videos feature talking head CEOs droning on about the company’s values and branding, or boring product demos that are sure-fire insomnia cures. If you’re tasked with producing a video about your company’s vacuum cleaner, don’t just show it picking up dirt from a carpet (zzzzzzzzzzzz) but show it working upside down; in outer space; strapped to the front of a truck smoothing out the graveled Alaska Highway; sucking up a landfill or sandy beach or the entire Sahara Desert… anything that’s so out of left field that your viewers simply won’t be able to help themselves in posting to their social cliques: “You gotta watch this!”

Do the Limbo in a Vat of Chocolate Syrup

Now that you have a “killer video” you’ve got to get people to watch it. This step is generally what separates the wheat from the chaff in online video marketing. I once had a client ask me how many people watched YouTube videos. I replied hundreds of millions. He then informed me that he wanted his video to be seen by every single YouTube viewer. When I told him that if he created a video of Lady Gaga, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, George W. Bush, Stephen Hawking and the Dalai Lama all doing the limbo in a pit of chocolate syrup I still couldn’t guarantee him 100% viewership, he was shattered. He just assumed that he could put up his product video on YouTube and it would be the equivalent of placing it during a commercial break on the Super Bowl.

The cold hard fact that there may be as many as 150 (or even 200) million videos on YouTube and almost a quarter million new ones are uploaded each day, so making yours stand out among this vast sea of videos is a severe challenge indeed.

Establish Relationships First, Promote Your Video Second

The relationship building core of social media is the key to attracting an audience to your video and taking that first step towards actually achieving virality. You have no choice but to invest oodles of time and effort into establishing, nourishing and rewarding relationships on a one on one basis with your social media followers so that they will be duly motivated to go check out that great new video you’re telling them all about. There always has to be a reason for the viewer to watch the video, and being able to communicate that as an integral aspect of your social media presences is an art form that must be mastered.