Hello Denizen. You may not have heard of the agency but it’s practically guaranteed you have seen their work. Do you remember the video that went viral back in April of a tiny hamster eating a tiny burrito? Hello Denizen.
Denizen is an award-winning social media agency based out of Los Angeles, CA. They find it their responsibility as marketers and advertisers to keep the “neighborhood” [the online community] fun, unique, and inviting. And their main goal is engagement by establishing a brand presence, optimizing an existing presence, expanding a brands presence or re-inventing it all together all through social media.
By looking at their past and present work it is clear they have found success by feeding into clever Internet trends. Is that all it takes to make a video go viral? When you see the “Tiny Hamsters Eating Tiny Burritos” video or the latest video “Tiny Birthday for a Tiny Hedgehog” you would never guess what or whom these videos are for. But, dose that matter?
Those two tiny videos were videos for Hello Denizen. They now have over 8 million video views, 420,000 Facebook likes and features on Good Morning America, Bloomberg, Today, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Gawker, Gizmodo, Mashable, Yahoo, NPR, LA Times, Time, Huffington Post, Fast Company, and Laughing Squid.
Making a viral video isn’t magic, it’s strategic. First you need to find content people would enjoy, like tiny animals. Then you need to create a well-produced video and title and tag it to make it easy to search and share. The last step is an important one and it’s sharing. Just posting it to your Facebook and Twitter followers will only reach so far. Submitting it to social news sites such as Reddit and Hacker News is where the views start to pick up. From there you work on getting it picked up by the major blog sites such as Mashable, Jezebel and Huffington Post. Entrepreneur.com breaks down some key points that will help you make your videos go viral.
Now that we know a little bit more about what makes videos viral, let’s enjoy one of the latest viral sensations.