3Cs of making a video viral
“Maaye ni meriye…”, a Himachali folk song sung by Ms. Devika S. S., a Class 9 student of Kendriya Vidyalaya (Shift-I) Pattom, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala under ‘Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat‘ initiative became a huge hit around India for the right reasons. When I listened to the song first time on a school WhatsApp group, posted by Ms. Devi S. R., the programme in-charge teacher, it caught my attention simply because of the brilliance in the melodious voice and the near perfect rendition by the singer. Yes, the the content (the first ‘C’) was very rich in quality and of proper video length. The second ‘C’ was the context. In this case, it was the much publicized ‘Ek Bharat Shreshatha Bharat’ (EBSB) programme aimed at improving the present cultural connections across various states of India. All States of India were paired each other and the state of Kerala was paired with Himachal Pradesh. The strong support, encouragement and personal attention from Mr. S. Ajayakumar, KV Pattom Principal to the students and teachers of the team was remarkable which made the EBSB a great success. This context created the platform on which the song stood strong and grew its wings to fly and reach millions.
The third ‘C’ was connections and that was the area where I experimented with and learn a bit about how to create links and reach out people at large through Social Media. The 2 minute 31 second video song was first posted on school Facebook page on September 28, 2020 and widely shared on school WhatsApp groups and Google Classrooms. The song was properly tagged with a plan to reach out to the officials who organized the EBSB programme at national level. It was tweeted on the same day on school Twitter account and posted on the second day on School Library YouTube channel. The song was widely shared on various WhatsApp groups around the country and reached thousands of students, teachers and parents. The song was getting more and more popularity. The remote learning environment developed due to the COVID-19 pandemic was another reason where the single option to share content was online.
Building connections was the next step. Social media pages and websites of Newspapers and Television channels were the first targets. I had visited a number of such pages and shared the video with details over there with requests to watch and share. The first news about the viral song was published on the web portal, Malayala Manorama on October1, 2020. By the time, it was liked and shared by a popular Himachali singer who had a good number of followers. This made the song viral among music lovers around the country. All these news items, videos, tweets and mentions were reposted and tweeted multiple times with proper tagging in the following days.
Honourable Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi tweeted about the song and appreciated the singer on October 10, 2020. Then there was no looking back and the song crossed millions of views and mesmerized the whole nation.
This experiment shows that with the right mixing of Content, Context and Connections, you could reach millions of people on Social Media.
Let Devika sing more beautiful songs and entertain us in these difficult times!
S. L. Faisal 