Tried to make a funny blog go viral?

[ForeignProfessor]

Occasionaly a blog 'goes viral' and gets spread all over the net because it's funny. I'm talking about sites like stuffwhitepeoplelike.com. That site was not created by an Internet Marketer but it took off and has had millions of views. If it had been created by an Internet Marketer they probably could have optimized it to create a very good revenue stream. The guy who made it got a book deal out of it and a few other sources of income and so he did pretty well. I wonder how well he would have done if he'd had considerable knowledge on how to make money from websites?

Has anyone here tried to make a blog go viral in the same way? I don't mean simply by providing quality information which people want to link to, but to make a blog that is genuinely funny and which would spread like wildfire across Digg, forums, and even print newspapers (I've read about it in the New York Times, for example).

If you've tried to make a blog like this how did you do?

I guess the hardest part would be making a blog funny and interesting enough to take off in the same way. It would market itself if it was funny enough.

I was thinking of experimenting with this as a way to give internet marketing a go. I have big plans for the future but they require 100s of hours of work creating genuine quality content first. I don't know if I have the talent to make a blog like this, but I figure I could knock out 30 or 50 posts and set them up to stream over a month on a blog. As I say, they key here would be trying to make the blog go viral through being genuinely funny.

Anyone tried it? I think coming up with a good enough idea and then actually writing well enough are the hardest parts. I might give it a go.

[ForeignProfessor]

No thoughts anyone? Is someone making too much money doing this to want to post? Is it it too difficult to do? Is it a dumb idea?

[nick1123]

Originally Posted by ForeignProfessor

No thoughts anyone? Is someone making too much money doing this to want to post? Is it it too difficult to do? Is it a dumb idea?

It's a good idea in theory.

But in practice it can very hard.

It requires identifying the elements that make something go viral, and then coming up with something that meets those requirements.

People have discussed this a lot recently like in the book Made to Stick (excellent read!).

Give it a try and tell us how it goes.

[JohnMcCabe]

From what I've seen, it's very difficult to "make a blog go viral". It seems to be a matter of 'right place, right time'.

On the most recent "Celebrity Apprentice" season (American TV show), one of the tasks was to create a viral video for a laundry detergent.

One team did some superficial keyword research and noticed the word "midget" was highly searched for. So they based their video around the idea of a few little people dressed like detergent bottles scrubbing one of the celebrities clean. They ended the video with a manufactured out-take of one of the actors cursing the costumes and walking off the set.

The celebs who created the ad thought it was hysterical, and that people would love to pass a mediocre commercial around. The company reps disagreed.

The other team based their video around weaving a product placement into a re-enactment of a very old dirty joke.

The company reps hated it.

I couldn't imagine anyone seeing either video, which were just commercials anyway, and saying, "oh, boy, I gotta send this to everyone I know..."

Some very smart people have tried to analyze viral events in an attempt to duplicate them at will. I'm not aware of any significant successes.

Even the people who do have things go viral seem genuinely shocked when they do.

Of course, that's no reason to abandon the idea. You might catch lightning in a bottle.

[ForeignProfessor]

Interesting thoughts, thanks.

Most (all?) of the viral sites I've seen whose success I'd like to try and emulate have indeed been created 'accidently'.

Anyway, if I DO give it a go I'll be sure to post an update.

[Loren Woirhaye]

You must be aware that the person who created stuffwhitepeoplelike
is a humorist - a comedy writer, a person who takes writing humor
seriously. It's a funny site because the writer is funny and has
years invested in the skill.

Things that go viral with video anyway, tend to be problematical
commercially speaking. Good bets are fart jokes, scenes of humiliation
and the kind of general stuff that could harm your brand.

Viral is random mostly - what you can do to get a better shot
is invest a lot of energy in coming up with ideas. Get Jack Foster's
book "How To Get Ideas" for a start... and start cranking them
out.

[dwt]

Animals make for funny videos sometimes. If you have a pet, keep your camera handy at all times. Not only can they make for a great video, the chances of it demeaning or hurting your business name are slim to none.

[MaxReferrals]

Two ingredients that help make it successful:

1. Humor
2. Personalization

[JohnMcCabe]

Originally Posted by dwt

Animals make for funny videos sometimes. If you have a pet, keep your camera handy at all times. Not only can they make for a great video, the chances of it demeaning or hurting your business name are slim to none.

True enough, but unless you're in the pet niche, the chances of such a video being commercially viable are also pretty slim.

[Re-cycle]

I personally know the guy from FailBlog.org he gets his content form his visitors, makes a KILLING on advertisements. Rich, funny guy... and it all started with a Digg to his website...

[dwt]

Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe

True enough, but unless you're in the pet niche, the chances of such a video being commercially viable are also pretty slim.

Or...say the video shows a cat taking a nap on a tv and then falling off, (has anyone seen that video?--Pretty funny )--the caption of the video could read, "Has your web traffic been falling off lately..."

Not the greatest example, but you get the idea.