Chances are if you are active on Facebook or Twitter you have seen posts about Kony 2012. In just under a week the 30 minute video has become a viral video sensation. The success of this video can teach us internet marketers a thing or two about sharing videos online without getting caught up in the positive or negative effects of the actual Invisible Children charity’s intentions. This video proves a number of points that fly in the face of conventional viral marketing wisdom, read the full article below for more information.

By Greg Jarboe

The top video in the Viral Video Chart is Kony 2012, “a film and campaign by Invisible Children that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice.” Uploaded on March 5, this video had over 69.8 million views as of the time of the writing of this column six days later.

Created in-house by Jason Russell, KONY 2012 had been shared more than 7.6 million times on Facebook as of Sunday morning, according to the Viral Video Chart, and embedded in more than 6,200 blogs. According to Google News, 4,950 news sources have written stories about “KONY 2012.” The phenomenal success of this film shatters some myths about viral videos and teaches some other important lessons for video marketers.

Conventional wisdom says that videos need to be short and funny in order to go viral. Well, KONY 2012 is 29 minutes and 59 seconds long. So, it isn’t short. And Joseph Kony was indicted for war crimes in 2005 by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, but has evaded capture. So, this video isn’t funny.

This isn’t to argue that short, funny videos don’t go viral. They can and do. But there are other formulas for success that video marketers should consider.

Read the full article here http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2158539/Kony-2012-Lessons-for-Video-Marketers?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sew+%28Search+Engine+Watch%29