The UGLY TRUTH About Going Viral on YouTube

everybody dreams of going viral at some point they look at the internet they look at youtube you see a video with millions and millions of views for something trivial someone bit my finger someone fell off a roof someone did a weird funny dance and that dream of a viral video is something that fuels people whether it's for fame whether it's for money whether it's brand awareness whether it's sales whether it's sponsorships a new career some kind of celebrity but there's some good and bad points about going viral on youtube let's talk about the ugly truth of going viral on youtube good a video that goes viral can really scare rocket your channel you could be churning content out on a regular basis and then all of a sudden one video goes viral and bang loads of more eyes for your channel loads of more attention for your channel more subscribers loads of comments are pushing the algorithm that can splash over all of the rest of your content that happens to be there and all of a sudden a tide is raising the entire ship and off to the races we go this is the ideal scenario this is the thing that everybody hopes for that you can just churn out videos for a couple of months or a little bit longer and bang you get one viral video that then makes your career and you can ride that youtube wave until the cows come home the bad about this is that if you haven't got a back catalogue and one video goes viral there's nothing for you to lift right there's no other content for you to do there or if you upload a youtube video and that's wildly in a specific niche a a subset of your subset say for example in my case i've got a video that does really really well but it's all about downloading a youtube video not necessarily the art of teaching and growing and learning youtube so that video gets a lot of views but not necessarily the 100 the audience that i would desire to collect if you're clever you can funnel that traffic into other videos to get other people to watch the stuff that you want to watch but in some cases it could be wildly disorientating there is a youtube creator and educator called annie dube who is a fantastic educator and what she does is gives the personal and a humanized approach to youtube education and learning she does it fantastically well with huge heart for the content in itself but initially when she uploaded that video that was an outlier on her channel she'd been doing more lifestyle content so to be thrust into the eye of everybody as a youtube expert in making youtube formulas and youtube algorithm videos that kind of disorientated her as that's not how she had perceived her channel to be she even went out the way to start a second channel to kind of sideline that youtube educational content but that didn't work either she's now fully embraced the youtube educator moniker and now she's doing fantastically well that's the power of a viral video in this case it it kind of pushed her in a direction that maybe she's not 100 comfortable with but adapting herself and pushing forward that can now be a career but imagine if your entire channel was about swimming lessons and you then did one specific review of a specific product and now you have to become the flipper person or the snorkel person rather the swimming lessons that you initially had wished to promote so what do you do if you do go viral the best thing happens to be that if you've got a back catalog try and throw as many of that back catalogue in the path of that video put them in the descriptions of the the viral video put them into the comments section of the viral video try and link them to playlists so therefore they can start diving into those playlists and i'm lifting the channel entirely giving the channel and youtube and the algorithm some watch metrics to start suggesting people to that content that's directly on that video secondly start putting out content that is related but not directly a copy of that video the reason for this if you can make a part two or a slight twist and tweak to the the main concept say for example your video was all about planting seeds for grass in your front lawn you could now do videos on how to maybe maintain that or how to cut it or how to feed it these then assist those and could be suggested to relevant audiences suggested audience connected audiences to that video and then hopefully lift up and suggest each other against each other alternatively if your channel is wildly different to that specific video and you're okay with it double down into that new topic start making videos around that topic that assist it because if they're related then they could be suggested against it and once again this generates a view watch time loop they can't just watch one video they can binge all of the associated videos and it can lift the entire channel grow your channel very quickly at the end of the day it's all about manipulating the algorithm to get the most out of your channel if you want to learn how to beat the youtube algorithm as a small youtuber watch this video here and i'll see you soon