How do you go about making a video “go viral” by using Twitter?

You don’t.

You may have heard about famous “viral videos,” such as the classic Honda Accord Ad that received millions of views with its fascinating Rube Goldberg machine. The premise: by investing in high-quality content on the front end, you get people to spread your message for you. If you’re not familiar with viral videos, check out this Mashable post about the top viral videos from 2010.

Unfortunately, a number of marketers still seem to get this fundamentally wrong, and you can commonly see it happening on Twitter. The misconception: Twitter makes videos (and other content) go viral. It doesn’t. Twitter is simply a platform wherein users can easily spread viral content (and ignore non-viral content).

Either your content is viral or it isn’t. That said, here is a possible strategy for increasing the likelihood of making a video go viral, using SEO and Twitter as content-generating tools. Give it a try.

1. Use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to find search-engine friendly keywords. Type in a phrase or two related to your area of expertise, and see what it spits out. Pick out a phrase with at least 1,000 local searches per month and a low “competition” number.

2. Do a search on Twitter to find out what’s getting re-tweeted on your subject. For example, if you want to do a video about ice cream, look to see what people are saying about ice cream on Twitter. Re-tweets are a good indicator of what’s likely to spread. For example, I searched for “viral video” on Twitter before writing this blog post and found that this Jennifer Aniston water promo had received 10 recent re-tweets. I don’t even really like the video, but it worked.

Those two steps are enough to get started. Pick out some strong keywords, put them in your post title, tweet the post, and see what happens. Check Google and see how your post ranks. You should also check out  Timothy Ferriss’s blog post about generating re-tweets.

Leave a comment here if you’ve had any success (or failure) with this type of approach.

Earlier this week, I visited YouTube and happened to see a sponsored video at the top of the screen. Instinctively, I was about to turn off the ad, but something caught my eye and got me just curious enough to watch the CoolHaus video.

(Note: “CoolHaus.com” takes you to a dead domain parking page. The correct URL is EatCoolHaus.com).

The video starts out with a compelling line: “CoolHaus is an architecturally-themed ice cream sandwich company.” They describe their business in one sentence that clearly shows a unique and remarkable niche. The video goes on to show some quick teaser shots of ice cream flavors like red velvet, peach cobbler, coffee crunch, and others.

Here’s what got on my radar. The video mentions the fact that CoolHaus uses social media to sell more ice cream. The ad suggests that the strategy is working, and I don’t find that hard to believe. Why? Because their product and their delivery mechanism is optimized for social media and the web.

If you’ve ever watched Social Media in Plain English(a cartoon video using ice cream as an example of social media for business), you’ll particularly appreciate what CoolHaus has done.

What do I mean by that? The company uses ice cream trucks. The CoolHaus web site allows you to request a delivery to your office with sandwiches built to order, complete with an edible wrapper with your company’s logo on it. You can also load the company’s Google Calendar to see the truck’s delivery route and schedule.

Now, imagine if they’d opened an ordinary ice cream store and done the same thing as everyone else, complete with daily Twitter posts advertising 10% off an ice cream cone. Instead, they built a business worth talking about and then made it easy to spread the word. Seth Godin would be proud.

I don’t know how well CoolHaus’s business is doing, but I like the look of it so far. Let’s put it this way – I can’t imagine any company doing what CoolHaus is doing going completely wrong. If you’re in New York, Houston, or LA and get the chance to try their ice cream sandwiches, let me know how they are! Meanwhile, I’ll be waiting until the company opens up shop in Raleigh.

1. Miproapps-An application that allows users to design a fan page by simply dragging and dropping elements to the center of the page.
2. Tabfusion-An application that actually has an app for each tab that you want to add to your Facebook fan page. This application is free.
3. NorthSocial-A service (which comes with a 14-day free trial) that provides easy-to-use applications that enable users to quickly create and edit a custom Facebook page.
4. Static520-This service helps users create the illusion of having a mini-website inside of their Facebook fan page. Once you sign up for the service and add your content to their editor program, you will then be able to add a static FBML tab to your page where you will be able to copy the code. Users get 2 weeks worth of a free trial to see if they like the service, and then after that it’s $19/year.
5. Pagemodo-An application that allows users to create a ‘Welcome’ or ‘About’ tab on their Facebook fan page without any prior knowledge about Static FBML by using a generator that is simply to use. Click here to see Pagemodo in action.

For a continuation of this list, check out the link below to TechCrunch.

[Via: TechCrunch]