If you think that making a video go viral is just luck, you'd be wrong. Of the videos that go viral on YouTube and other video sites, most were created for just that purpose. The people behind the video used just the right tools and took all the right steps to get the desired outcome, and you can too.

Your videos content is clearly an important part making it go viral. It should be either very humorous or something outlandish that makes people sit up and take notice. If the content is good, the quality of the video isn't very important. If it is entertaining, people won't care that is isn't professional, in fact, sometimes it's better for it to have an amateurish feel to it, as long as it makes viewers want to share it with others. Preferably, your video should be one of the select few on YouTube's "Most Viewed" front page, because that's when the views really start to explode.

Your video should be short, only about 30 to 60 seconds long. Anything much longer than that is hard to get people to commit. Be careful when giving your video a title because that is a major attention-getter. Sometimes you may have to use something a little misleading to get a better viewership. When you tag the video, include as many tags as you can that will help people find it if they don't know the title. Be sure the video is embeddable so it can be posted to various websites.

Once your video is uploaded, you'll need to get moving. Start with email, sending it to as many contacts as possible and requesting that they forward it on. Next, move on to your social networking accounts; post it on friend's pages, group pages, and community pages, giving it as much exposure as possible. Don't forget to post the video to forums and blogs, as well as any other appropriate sites.

One of the best ways to promote a video is to get comments on it, especially controversial comments. You can do this yourself using multiple accounts or get a friend to contribute. Most viewers will take the time to read the comments even though few will leave any. That controversy could be the element that gets people sending it to friends to view.

When posting your video on YouTube, you will have three thumbnail screenshots to choose from to post with the video. One of the three, one always comes from the middle of the video, so make sure that as you are creating the video, you have something in the middle that will make a good thumbnail. As soon as you have people sharing your video with friends and it's getting all that exposure, it's as good as viral.