7 Secrets to Posting Viral Videos Everyone Will Share

For people who have their own YouTube channels, or marketers trying to get their carefully crafted video to spread across the Internet, understanding why people choose to share some things and not others has become a bit of a science.

What lies behind a person’s motivation to share anything is a psychological phenomenon that predates the Internet. Radio and television marketers worked relentlessly ever since the invention of radio broadcasting to create musical ditties that would make people remember the product, or news stories that would get people talking at the water cooler at work the next day.

Emotional Motivations of Sharing

Motivation for sharing anything comes from a very primal set of emotions and reactions to acquiring new knowledge. It comes down to a magical mix of personality, a personal belief system, and a set of common primal responses that make us all human.

Because the desire to get people to share information with each other goes so far back, it shouldn’t be surprising that some of the most fundamental research in this comes from a 1966 psychology study published by William C. Schutz titled “A three dimensional theory of interpersonal behavior“, where Shutz concluded that there are three kinds of interpersonal human relations: inclusion, control, affection.

In fact, these are three extremely powerful human motivators that have driven much more serious and impactful things throughout history than anything the Internet has influenced.

• Control: People need to feel like they are in control of their own social environment. They want to control how friends and family (and strangers) view them, and by framing the social conversations around them online, they can portray whatever image they prefer.
• Affection: Having a connection with another human being is an innate human need, and this is no less true on the Internet. The act of sharing something with someone expresses many things to the other person. It conveys that you have concern for their interests and their needs, and in doing so it strengthens the common bond that you both share.
• Inclusion: The final motivator listed in the 1966 study is also one of the most powerful. The need to feel part of a group. Most often online this translates to things like activists who are passionate about the same things, the religious or political who share a common belief system, or any organization or club where membership is somewhat exclusive.

If you’re a YouTube vlogger looking to create videos that’ll attract a large crowd, or you’re just looking for something interesting on Instagram or Pinterest that you’d like to share with your friends, understanding these three core motivators can help you identify videos that will make a strong impact on people who see it. You will develop a strong eye for the things that people like to share.

Which Videos Get Shared?

Believe it or not, of the hours and hours of videos that get uploaded to YouTube every day, only 50 percent of those are ever seen by more than 1,000 people. If you want to truly grasp the odds of making a video going viral, consider the fact that barely 6 percent of the videos on YouTube ever get over million views.

According to Christina Desmarais at Inc.com, the secret comes down to tapping into one of those three core motivators through creating content that, “…triggers a strong response from the emotional, cognitive or primal areas of the brain.”

How do you accomplish this? It’s actually not that difficult to trigger one of those responses from someone. The real trick is triggering a strong enough response for the person to take the time to share that video with everyone they know. There are seven ways you can accomplish this.

Tug the Heartstrings (Affection)

Cats, babies and more. Almost everyone loves to see adorable kittens do silly things. When a baby laughs, people smile.