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Chapter 5 Creating Entertaining Videos 61

video that garners millions of viewers might be good for the ego (and perhaps nec-
essary to build a huge brand like Budweiser), that might not be the most appropri-
ate goal for the average web marketer. For most companies, attracting a thousand
targeted customers is both more profitable and more realistic than getting viewed
by a million strangers with no intention of ever purchasing anything from you.

So while striving for viral status might be appealing, it’s probably not the best strat-
egy for most marketers. (It’s also very difficult to do; the most embarrassing videos
are those that strive to be virally entertaining and instead fall flat on their faces.)
Instead of shooting for the moon with a video that might be entertaining to a broad
demographic, a more appropriate focus is creating a video that appeals to your tar-
get audience. For most businesses, that’s the way you achieve YouTube success, in a
low-key fashion.

Producing an Entertaining Video

How do you go about producing an entertaining video? I really can’t tell you; no
two entertaining videos are remotely similar.

That said, you definitely need to be creative. Really creative. Really, really creative.
More creative than you can imagine.

Know, however, that you either have the creative spark or you don’t. If you do, you
create a video that people remember and want to share. If you don’t, you create a
video that falls flat on its face. As I’ve said, this is a high-risk category.

To that end, this is the one type of video where you might not want to go it alone. If
you want to go the entertaining route, it may be wise to engage the services of a
video production firm or advertising agency that specializes in this sort of thing.
Let your agency come up with the creative ideas; they have people on staff who do
this for a living. They know what works and what doesn’t.

You should not, however, buy into the spiel of any firm that “guarantees” they can
create a viral video for you. No one can guarantee a video going viral. Viral videos
happen only rarely, when everything clicks and you hit a sweet spot in the public
consciousness. Any firm promising you a viral video might as well be peddling
snake oil; the best a company can promise is the production of a professional video.
What happens after that is up to the YouTube universe.

The Big Picture

Of the three types of videos you can produce, entertaining videos have the biggest
upside; most viral videos are entertaining videos. Entertaining videos are also the
most difficult to produce, and require a degree of creativity (and luck) that not all