How to make your YouTube video go viral 2018

In viral marketing every thing is dependent on the content & strategy for amplification.

The recipe behind making anything go viral is an opportune mix of timing, audience targeting, distribution channels, amplification, seeding, and cross promotion on multiple platforms.

Velocity is something that can define the probability of any content to go viral = (views + articles + conversations + impressions) / time.

Note: This case has been used in tea for trump campaign - you can check the viral marketing case study which also received various award including most creative PR stunt in South East Asia - PR awards 2017.

So, a lot of people don't realize that many of the sites we frequent are operated by very dumb algorithms. They have to be dumb because if they were complicated, that'd start to cut into site load time and usability, and that's a non-starter. Especially when your site serves millions of people a day. YouTube definitely has a dumb algorithm it uses for that reason.

That's GREAT news for you.

But here's the bad news ...

Getting stuff to "go viral" is often a crapshoot. In fact, Buzzfeed (often paraded around as "experts" on viral marketing) often has to make changes to content on the fly once its posted because they don't know if it'll spread or not. Their goal is to raise the CHANCE that it'll spread.

So I'm not going to sit here and tell you to "make good content" because that's bullshit. Shit content spreads better. That's why Buzzfeed steals from Reddit and HuffPost and Business Insider run the crap that they do.

What I will tell you is that you want to trigger the YouTube algorithm without being shitty about it, regardless of the kind of content you're uploading.

You can go and buy YouTube views off of eBay and Fiverr, but Google is getting pretty good at catching that shit.

What they're not so good at catching is what I'm going to recommend you do to spread your stuff: Bribe people.

If you want your stuff to "go viral", and I'm assuming you did the press outreach and got all your friends to share the video on Facebook and link to it on their blogs (this is a must because it feeds the algorithm), the other thing you have to do is get people to sit and watch the video IN ITS ENTIRETY AS SOON AS IT GOES LIVE. Then, have them leave a question or a comment (although, pre-Google+ integration, questions seemed to have done better.)

Doing all these things (not some, ALL) will trigger the algorithm, and as more people view the video, it'll start to surface higher and higher and spread into more sections and categories on the YouTube site.

I'm only sort of kidding on the bribery part, but you get what I'm saying.

What to do :

1. When the YouTube video launches, there should be a lot of activity that occurs as soon as it goes live.

2. Get your friends to share it on Facebook and blog about it (the other social networks really don't matter, as far as I can tell at this point in time).

3. Get the press / blogs to write and link or embed the video

4. Get as many people as you can, through whatever means necessary, to watch the video and leave a comment.

How To Chase Spam

I Hate Spam

I really hate it. I hate it so much, that I threw together some basic directions on how to chase the spam you get. What does that mean? It means you track down where the spam came from, and you forward it to the source. In theory, they will stop/block/cancel the person responsible for sending it, making sending spam that much more difficult.

Looking for a more automated solution? Scroll to the bottom...

Summary

Here's the basic idea of what you need to do:

1) Identify your mail server
2) Identify exactly where the junk mail came from
3) Forward the junk mail to the junk mail's source and your ISP
4) Forward the junk mail to the owner of the site that the junk mail advertises
5) Repeat (since you probably have a crap load of junk mail)

Step By Step Instructions

1) Identify your outgoing mail server. If you use an email address from your ISP, then you most likely use their mail server. It may be something like smtp.[yourisp].com or mail.[yourisp].com.

2) Identify where the mail is coming from. This part is complicated. There are lots of mail clients out there, so its impossible for me to give you specific instructions. But I can tell you generally what you need to do. First, if there's a 'From:' address, ignore it completely. What you have to do is show the full mail headers. By default, most mail programs show an abbreviated set of mail headers, because you really don't need to know the details on legitimate emails. For Spam Chasing, you need it all. Once you have the full headers showing, its time to get busy. The following is an example of the type of headers you may see, without their actual values in place:

Subject:
Date:
To:
Reply-To:
Received:
Received:
Received:
Received:
X-Antivirus:
X-Priority:
X-Msmail-Priority:
X-Mailer:
X-Mimeole:
Organization:
Mime-Version:
Content-Type:
Message-Id:
X-Virus-Scanned:

Now you may see a lot of different web sites and domain names in there, but ignore them. Everything there can be and probably has been faked. Everything but one line. Look for the 'Received:' line that contains your mail server. The format should be something similar to this:

Received: from domain.com [202.154.161.61] by your.mail.host.com (AppleMailServer 10.2.3.0) id 47313 via TCP with SMTP; Sat, 21 Feb 2004 05:44:50 -0500

That line is they key, it tells you the exact IP address that talked to your mail server. It is the source of the junk mail. Copy that IP address.

3) The next step is to find out who that IP address belongs to. Go to my WhoIs page and look up the IP:

http://www.whatsmyip.org/whois

You have to read the results carefully. If the IP is not in the arin database, it should send you a link to another database that does contain that IP. Once in a while you may have to jump to a 3rd database, but not usually. Once you get the results, it should list who owns the IP address, and it should have IP addresses you can forward the junk mail too. The best address is an abuse@domain.com address, but if they don't list an address like that, send it to whoever they do list. From time to time I go to their web site and look up some email address on their site, to make sure they get the junk. Bookmark the arin web site, you will be using it a lot.

So in addition to any email address you find for the IP's owner, you also want to forward the junk mail to your ISP's email address, usually abuse@[yourisp].com or spam@[yourisp].com.

4) Next you want to find out who owns the web site the spam mail advertises. There has to be a link in the mail somewhere. If not, its probably a virus-generated email and not spam per-se. Find the link, and copy just the domain name. For instance below, you'd want just the green part...

http://click.wonderful-deals.com/sp/t.pl?id=277136:1421725

That domain is what you need. Now with that address, you want to go back to my whois page, and look up who owns the domain. There will be email addresses. They may or may not be real, but those should be to the spammer himself so it will be nice to send him his mail back.

Next, on the whois page, you want to type the domain into the top box and resolve it to its IP address. Now lookup that IP address and see what you get. That most likely will be the ISP or web host of the spammer's web site. Add any email addresses you see there to your forwarding. They will close down the spammers web site and make him start all over. The harder is it so be a spammer, the fewer spammers there will be.

5) Repeat until your junk mail folder is empty, or until you have gone insane.

Automate The Process

www.spamcop.net

Sign up for SpamCop (Its free although you can donate if you want to). You will be given your own unique email address to use. Forward your SPAM to that email address. For each spam you sent to it, spamcop will automatically scan the email headers and body, and lookup all the 'Abuse' email addresses, and send you a confirmation email. That confirmation email contains a link that will bring you to yet another page. This page lets you send, in a single click, all of the SPAM reports for the server(s) the email came from, and the server(s) hosting the web site the SPAM is advertising. Its a little confusing at first but in the end it lets you save a TON of time by automating a lot (but not all, you still have to click on the confirmation email YOU get sent, for each SPAM you send to SpamCop) of the process of reporting SPAM.

To forward a SPAM to them, you have to do so with full headers. I've found that the best program for SPAM reporting is Mozilla ThunderBird. It automatically does full headers when you forward, so you don't have to do anything special there. And it lets you click on multiple emails and click forward, so you can send all of your SPAM email to SpamCop all at once. I use Apple Mail as my primary email client, and I have my SPAM filters put all my SPAM in a special email account. I have Thunderbird check JUST that account. It seems like a complicated process but its really much simpler than it seems. And this system allows me to report 100% of my SPAM! Doing it by hand, I never had near enough time to do it all!

How Do Spammers Get Your Email Address ? Can We Prevent Them ?

Spam seems to arrive in every single email account we use, no matter how careful we are. How are spammers getting all our email addresses? And can we do anything to hide our email address from spammers?

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot you can do to prevent spammers from bombarding you with emails. There are some tips that will help protect you, but spammers will probably find your email address eventually.

Leaked Account Databases

The easiest way for spammers to collect large lists of good, active email addresses is via leaked account databases. These password leaks happen with frightening regularity. Organizations as big as Adobe, LinkedIn, eHarmony, Gawker, Last.fm, Yahoo!, Snapchat and Sony have all been compromised in the past few years. These leaked databases are normally considered a security threat because they often show  account names and passwords. However, they generally show email addresses, too. Spammers can download these leaked databases and add the millions of email addresses to their email lists. Spammers know that the majority of these email addresses should be active, so these databases are excellent for them.

This is likely the way most spammers are currently finding email addresses to spam. There’s really not much you can do to protect yourself from a spammer getting your email address in this way.

A site like Have I been pwned?  can tell you if your account information might have been leaked, but these sites won’t include every leak. You can protect yourself from password leaks by not re-using the same password everywhere, but you practically have to re-use the same email address everywhere.

Clicking Links or Loading Images in Spam Emails

If you do get spam emails, you should avoid clicking links in the email. If you see an “Unsubscribe” link in an email from a legitimate company, it’s probably safe to click it. A legitimate company doesn’t want to spam you and potentially run afoul of anti-spam laws, so they’ll just remove you from their list.

On the other hand, if you see an “Unsubscribe” link (or, worse yet, a “Buy Now!” link) in spam email that looks very unprofessional and scammy, the spammer won’t necessarily remove you from their lists. They’ll note your click and their systems will identify your email address as active. They know you’re there, and you may see larger amounts of spam after you click the link.The same goes for loading images in spam emails. Don’t click the “Load Images” button, or the spammers will know you’ve opened the email. Even if you don’t see an image in the email, there may be a tiny one-pixel tracking bug that allows the spammer to identify you if you load it. This is why most email clients don’t automatically load images.

Scraping the Web For Plain-Text Addresses

Spammers have traditionally harvested email addresses by scraping the web — kind of like Google does — and look for email addresses mentioned on websites. For example, someone may post a comment like “Email me at jon@example.com”. The spammer would then add this address to their spam lists. This is why Craigslist provides a temporary email address where you can be reached rather than including your real email address. This technique is probably less common now that spammers have such large leaked account databases to feast on.

Spammers may also try to acquire valid email addresses by looking in other places they’re publicly available, such as whois records for a domain. These records display an email address associated with the person or organization who registered the domain name.

Buying Lists of Email Addresses

Why do the work yourself when other spammers have already built up lists of email addresses for you? Unscrupulous people will sell lists of email addresses to spammers for a low price. These email addresses were often distributed on CDs in the past, and they may still be, but leaked account databases have probably taken some steam out of this marketplace. Spammers may also just trade their lists of email addresses with other spammers, ensuring more spammers will get their hands on your email address once one does.

Legitimate businesses won’t sell or buy lists of email addresses.

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Spammers can also get email addresses in other ways — for example, malware could harvest address book data and send it to spammers — but the above methods are some of the most common.

There’s not a lot you can do to avoid having your email address spammed. You can avoid putting your email address on the web in plain-text form and never click a link or load an image in a spam email. But your email address will still end up out there at some point — if only because you signed up to a popular website and their account database was compromised.

Thankfully, we have better spam filters these days. If you’re using an email service with a good spam filter, you shouldn’t need to care about spam beyond clicking the occasional “Report Spam” button when a spam email makes it to your inbox.