Easy Furniture Web Tip 206: My Video That Went Viral

Furniture World News Desk on 3/8/2015

Warning: This isn’t specifically a story about the furniture business, but it shows how using social media, in ways that are unrelated to your business can extend your reach and just maybe, bring you business.

It’s just the story of how a video I made went viral on Facebook. As I write this, it has 3.7 million views and is still going strong, adding about 50,000 views daily.

My friend, Hannah Hudson, was visiting me on February 13 and while we chatted I was puttering in my kitchen putting away groceries. I had some plastic bags to put away, so I started storing them in a method I had been doing since the 90s.

Hannah was astonished and said she had to take a picture. I said, “Well, we may as well do a video and put it on Facebook.”

So she whipped out her smart phone and we shot the video, which she posted on her Facebook page.

I had a feeling it was going to go viral, but to me viral meant 80,000 views in a few months.

In about a week, we were up to a million views. I thought it was great but I had no thought of making commercial use of it. After all, it was just a tip about a cool way to store plastic bags.

Hannah thought otherwise. She went into the post, edited it, and started sending folks to my business Facebook page.

At the time, my Facebook page had about 195 “Likes.” As I write this I now have 1772 likes and they are increasing every day.

Now why didn’t I — Miss Marketing — think of that?

I noticed that many of those new “fans” are reading my business-oriented posts and engaging with them. Someday one of those folks is going to hire me or give me a good referral.

The video was poorly done. Hannah even shot it using the wrong orientation so the image is very narrow. I look terrible, no makeup — I’m really 37. But it’s gone viral nonetheless and I’m getting a ton of likes to my business page.

Now I’ve posted it on You Tube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukl5sOLQ1hk). If it gets some traction, maybe it will go viral there, too.

Between the You Tube version and the Facebook version and other places I decide to post it, this video will help my business by …

1. Getting more likes on my Facebook business page 
2. Sending more folks to my website
3. Getting more sign-ups to my email newsletter
4. As folks embed the You Tube link on their websites, it will send “link juice” to my website helping my rankings to stay higher

Easy Furniture Web Tip 206: You never know when a video will go viral and help your business in ways you can’t think of. Look for opportunities to create videos about anything interesting.

P.S. For years, I’ve been nagging Hannah to start a Facebook social media business because she’s so knowledgeable about Facebook. If you want to give her a try, you can connect with her here.

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Katherine Andes specializes in web content development and copywriting for SEO — including page customization for storefront and franchise web sites. Visit her website BetterWebSales.com or phone her at 559.589.0379.

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