Be Informative
The most popular content online is how-to and top-tens, and video is no exception. This is why the Dove Evolution video was such a hit, and the Tea Partay video was such a flop. The former showed you how things are actually done -- it informed the user by giving them insight into how end results in the real world are created. The latter, however, was just another cliched parody on a concept that's already played out -- white kids doing hip-hop -- and there was no informative value to it whatsoever.

You don't, however, have to always be informative about your specific industry. Anything that users enjoy learning from, they will pass on. If you can associate it with your industry, however, you should, because that's going to afford you trust (something that I'll cover below). Conversely, the less informative that your video is, they more you should compensate with instilling trust in the relationship between yourself and the target marketplace, and you can do that by engaging them on their own level (something else that I'll cover below).

Be Memorable
Both videos, of course, were viewed by millions of users, and that there is pretty much an indication that both of them were worth mentioning. That, in turn, suggest that they'll both be memorable, and that's the marketing potential of a viral video: that users notice and then remember that content long enough to tell others. What your video content is remembered for, however, is what separates the infectious from the defective.

In the case of the Dove Evolution video, we have a video about the false images spun by world of beauty products that is produced by a manufacturer of beauty products. When a peddler of beauty products reveals the methods behind the industry's madness, this helps establish trust with the marketplace, and as Mitch Joel puts it:

I’ll give you the ROI of social media, if you can return back the ROI on trust. Fair deal?

Basically, as far as the consumer is concerned, the Dove Evolution video gets remembered as an example of one company standing out by trying to change something that's wrong in their respective marketplace -- they show you just how unattainable the very standard of beauty that their competitors are usingto capture your dollars is. When I get that kind of insight in that kind of context, I remember who gave it to me. The Tea Partay video, on the other hand, is a piece of cheap entertainment that I'll remember as an iced tea commercial, but not exactly for whom -- after all, I didn't walk away from it with anything of value.

Be Trustworthy
This brings us to the thrid fundamental of viral video: you must appear trustworthy. If viral marketing is supposed to use natural human social networks to spread the message, then it needs to rely upon what makes social networks possible in the first place: trust.

Any viral marketing campaign succeeds because its message seems more trustworthy than when disseminated through more top-down means. If you want consumers/users to be ready to vouch for your message by passing it on, then you need to elicity their trust. And you can help do that by engaging them on their own terms -- and not from above like those other top-down means.

The Dove Evolution video does this by identifying with the suspicions that many consumers/users already have. The Tea Partay, however, as entertaining as it is, is largely fictional and absurd. I might pass it on for a good laugh, but not with the same meaningful endorsement that I will a video that offers a message that I identify with and, therefore, trust myself.

As for compensating for a lack of informative content with trust, it works something like this: the more that I feel like I know you, the more I trust you. Just like I'll trust you for offering me something at no cost, I'll trust you if I get a chance to connect with you on a human level. How do you do that? Well pretty much that every lobbyist and communications officer has ever dealt with the public: in person.

If you're itching to produce some viral video content and have no enlightening information to share, or if you're in viral video production high-gear and are running out of informative content, then you can help buld trust by giving your firm a human face. You do this by mandating one or several employees who are dynamic, creative, articulate, and likeable (re relatively attractive) to engage the public through a series of video casts or vlogs.

The viral potential here will work very much in the same as a blog would in the arena of reputation management. Your company gains a human touch by engaging with users and consumers in a very direct, visual manner. This is something that Vimeo has done to both populate its archives with quality viral content and promote the video sharing service. Two users specifically come to mind: one is Jakod Lodwick and the other is amandalynferri. While Jakob has produced 328 clips to date, amandalynferri produced only 23, but one of them was extremely popular Flagpole Sitta Lip Dub. Indeed, Jakob has produced a slew of Lip Dubs on his own.

What this all comes down to, however, is that Vimeo has gained the image of an organic, struggling start-up that is charming enough to inspire a community to form around it. None of its employees' videos have been particularly informative, but they have been human enough to elicit trust.

All in all, viral video needs to perform the very same functions that other forms of viral content do if it is going to be a successful marketing tactic for your project or company. It needs to be infectious insofar as it is memorable and trustworthy. It just so happens that being informative goes a long way in effecting that outcome. There are, however, other ways to elicit that trust and be memorable, and that's by being both original and human.