What Makes a Viral Video?
In the crowded world of online video, there’s a few players that stand out. Pages like NowThis, AJ+, and NasDaily consistently produce high-impact videos that garner hundreds of thousands of views every day.
NowThis and AJ+ operate in a similar space: both are social news services. They create similar content that is distributed via similar channels, yet both manage to get upwards of 50,000 views per video, with multiple videos being posted every day.
However, this number has been steadily decreasing over the past few years. In June of 2018, NowThis saw 1.3 billion Facebook views in a single month; in May of 2019, they saw 553 million.
This decline is partially the result of Facebook updating their algorithm, where they’ve limited the organic distribution of pages’ content in favor of friends’ posts. With the average Facebook user following 70 different pages, how do these companies ensure that their videos reach audiences?
It may not be possible to map the popularity of these companies to a single blueprint, but there are similarities across their social media pages. These companies exhibit three strategies that have led them all to success:
NowThis (Faster):
NowThis is a media news website and distributor that largely lives on Facebook. The company was created to specifically target Millennial/Gen Z audiences, who generally do not watch network TV and get much of their news from social media.
These younger generations are also more diverse and generally more liberal, and NowThis tries to mirror this. According to Managing Editor Versha Sharma, “We start with understanding what the audience wants on a platform and build our story selection from there." They follow a “platform first” strategy and it seems to work — 80% of NowThis’s audience is under the age of 35.
NowThis typically posts 15-20 videos a day on their Facebook page, usually once every 1-2 hours. Their videos are typically no longer than 3 minutes, and they regularly interact with their audiences in order to stimulate discussion and build a following.
AJ+ (Medium):
AJ+ is the social media division of Al Jazeera. Unlike NowThis, they have a full-fledged news organization behind them to provide them with content and support. In addition, Al Jazeera is funded by the Qatari government, so they provide a unique view that is rare in English media.
Their strategies, however, are similar to NowThis: their target audience is US millennials; they consider social media the final destination for their content; and they focus on social issues and inequalities in their reporting.
The Audience Development Strategist of AJ+, Alan Saura, said that the topics they choose to report on are a strategic choice: “One of the driving forces to distribution is people sharing the stories they are truly passionate about. So we strive to relate the news in a way… that they feel inspired to share our videos with their friends.”
The differences in their strategies are more apparent when you compare AJ+ and NowThis reporting on the same story. When the NYPD fired the police officer who killed Eric Garner in August of 2019, for example, NowThis and AJ+ both made videos about the event:
NowThis’s video largely features the Police Commissioner’s speech in his announcement to fire the officer. It gives background information about the event and is ~3min long. AJ+'s video instead features an emotional statement from Eric Garner’s daughter. Their video is ~1min long.
AJ+’s video was shared more times (331 vs 278), but NowThis’s video collected more views (140k vs 48k). NowThis also had more comments, but AJ+’s video had almost as many reactions, despite only having a third of the views.
Nas Daily (slower):
Nas Daily is a Facebook page operated by Nuseir Yassin. Since 2019, he has begun to post one video a week that is 3-4 minutes long. This video only exists on Facebook, and it’s rare that it doesn’t get several million views.
Nas Daily’s content differs from that of NowThis or AJ+. He doesn’t tout himself as a news service, but rather an individual travelling the world that tells the stories that he gathers along the way. As such, he usually makes human interest stories, with lots of interviews and footage of first-hand experiences.
Stylistically, Nas Daily mixes this hand-held documentary footage with graphics, transitions, skits, and vlog-style explanations straight to the camera. His videos often start with a thesis, and have a full beginning, middle, and end. They are more in-depth than the videos of NowThis or AJ+, but are also much longer and opinionated.
In short, Nas Daily employs the full gamut of filmmaking techniques in his videos, probably made possible because of his infrequent posting. This strategy, of course, comes with some downsides: his videos require much more effort than a shorter piece, and the chances of them going viral are much smaller.
Conclusion
These three pages all have style and content that is easily consumable through Facebook. However, the largest lesson to be learned here is that understanding your audience — their sensibilities, their online behavior, their demographics — and delivering informative, shareable content will allow infinitely more views.
Perhaps the moral of the story is that you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink — yet if you find a thirsty horse, you’ll both will be wildly satiated.
Yuki Soga is a Creative Partner at Rung-UP, where he has produced countless videos that have been viewed millions of times.