Important Lessons I've Learned from Creating a 6.2Million View Viral Video

Before I embark on a transition from YouTube to DTube I want to share a story about how one video that I created on Facebook changed everything and also taught me some crucial lessons. I really believe that YouTube and Facebook are fantastic for building an audience, but my aim is to then bring them over here to Steemit. 

Today I want to share a story about something which I am so grateful for but also led to many regrets and missed opportunities. In fact it all started one year ago to this day (14th Jan 2017). Many evenings saw me crawl into the black hole of Facebook, with no hope of getting back out. But being on it so much (too much) meant that I began to build a good understanding for what content works well and certain trends that are happening. 

One thing I noticed was that 60 second cooking videos were very popular and all these cooking pages started to spring up in a rat-race to become the biggest short video cooking page on Facebook. The views blew me away, with a few surpassing 100 million in total. I saw an opportunity in this because if cooking videos were doing so well how come there weren’t any 60 second gardening videos? 

I thought about this for some time, then mulled over it for another day and then the day after I had an actionable plan. After attempting my homework and revision I took my laptop up to the IT room at my old school and edited a 60 second version of one of my videos which was growing peas. The idea with short form video is to put across the bare basics of what is needed for doing the job. I cut the original video into small clips about 3-5 seconds in length and put them in order from start to finish. Because I didn’t know as much about editing back then I didn’t put text like the cooking videos did, instead I recorded my voice to give commentary style information. 

I then simply uploaded it and added a simple description with a link to the full-length video on YouTube. It was not the smartest thing, linking YouTube on Facebook as you will get a bit of algorithm damage but wow did it take off! In the evening I remember coming back from town with some friends and having a look at the video and was stunned to see 50,000 views, later on that evening it hit 100,000, and the next day it reached the 1 million mark. 

Having been on YouTube for a few years beforehand, and passing a million views after 2 and a half years of continuous content, I was amazed by the virality that came from the video. From that video I believe my page gained 50,000 likes, a huge majority of just over 72,000 in total.

YouTube and Facebook are two sites which are really frustrating me as a content creator, however I can’t get too upset because they are excellent places to build up a brand and to connect with people all over the world. 

The biggest regret I had from the creation of a viral video is that I didn’t jump on the wave, it crashed ashore and that was it. What I should have done was to then create one 60 second video a day for a week to promote a weekly show or my YouTube channel but because of exams I couldn’t do this. In hindsight I could have very much done that, it would have been more useful than a mock exam result. But the truth about regrets is you can’t turn back time. You can only learn from the mistakes and know what to do if it happens again.

I created a 60 second version of one of my popular YouTube videos about growing potatoes the lazy way and I posted this on my FB page. This now has 140,000 views, much more successful than my past attempts between that and the pea video, and I reckon it has brought just over 1,000 likes to my Facebook page.

As I build my audience on other social media channels I plan to slowly introduce Steemit to them, one of the strategies I mention in my ‘2018 Goals as a YouTuber on Steemit’ post is that I will trial uploading a video to @dtube exactly a week before it is published on YouTube. I believe I can bring in more content creators in the permaculture/homesteading/gardening niches, and because we often overlap audiences it will be all the more reason for people to come and see why we are all raving about Steemit.

From creating that viral video here is a brief summary of what I learnt from the experience:

• Always try out an idea, because I could have easily not bothered and missed out on one of the biggest opportunities I have had to date
• Be ready to try and harness the momentum by creating similar content to the viral video sooner rather than later
• Facebook video has a power for virality however it has to be something unique or the top of its game
• People like short form videos because time is getting evermore precious
• To accept missed opportunities and know to not do the same mistake if it would so happen again

I hope that this post has been informative and perhaps inspired you to just go for something. I have decided to just go for it on Steemit and keep an open mind and I have enjoyed my short amount of time on the platform so much.

Click here for the 60 second pea video

Click here for the full length YouTube video