An unconventional wedding video, featuring the wedding party dancing down the aisle to a popular hip hop song (Chris Brown’s “Forever”) has been getting a lot of attention on the Internet and in traditional media lately.  The video itself shows the entire bridal party of the Minnesota couple’s wedding doing a choreographed routine down the aisle.  The video lasts for over five minutes and is riveting from start to finish.

The Minnesota couple, Jill and Kevin Heinz, first published the video on YouTube on July 19, 2009.  By the time I saw it on July 23 (a friend of mine sent it to me on Facebook), it was up to 300,000 views.  Within days, it passed one million views and the couple (and their dancing friends) were featured on the Today show to talk about their famous processional dance and the explosion of the video’s popularity around the world. 

As of the time of this writing, the video has racked up over 14.6 million views. 

There is a specific reason that some videos on YouTube go viral – meaning that they gain widespread popularity through Internet sharing, usually through email, blogs and other media sharing websites.

That reason is JOY. 

In videos – as well as in real life – People relate to other people when they are at their best – whether they’re excelling at a sport, graduating from college, snuggling a brand new baby, or dancing down the aisle on their wedding day. When someone witnesses moments of true joy seen on video, they want to spread the joy by passing the video around.  Viral videos become popular simply because they are being passed around, just like a cold or flu germ, except that the passing is done via email, Facebook, blogs or Twitter.  The Minnesota “Forever” wedding video is a classic example.  People take this path – see joy, revel in that joy, and pass it on.  Beautiful.

The lesson bloggers can take from the huge popularity of these videos is this – You will attract more bees with honey than with vinegar.  When you’re writing blog posts, write about what you love, rather than what you hate.  Write about someone or something that thrills you, excites you, makes you light up.  If you’re passionate about something, and if you’re writing about something that’s unique (or you’re writing about it in a unique way) it will resonate with people.  With any luck, people will start to pass it around and link to it, which will lead to more traffic, more loyal readers and subscribers, and a bigger potential audience.

More great examples of joyful, passionate writing and film in social media (in blogs and viral videos):

• Charter of Compassion
  
• Gluten Free Girl
• Fabulous video of a wonderful whole-crowd dance in the Antwerp, Belgium
  
• Tim Ferriss' Lifestyle Design Blog

Do you have favorite videos or blogs that come from a place of joy? I'd love to hear about them!

The New York Times recently published an article on abandoned blogs called "Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest".  In a nutshell, it says that many bloggers don't stick with blogging.  The article says:

"According to a 2008 survey by Technorati, which runs a search engine
for blogs, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company
tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. That translates to 95
percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the
Web, where they become public remnants of a dream — or at least an
ambition — unfulfilled."

So overall, that's not such great news.  Most blogs get abandoned because the blogger tires of writing, he/she feels like they want to go back to living a life out of the public spotlight, or because the blogger gets frustrated that she's not getting enough traffic. 

But the golden nugget of good news it that if you DO stay with blogging, and pay regular attention to your blog, you're doing better than 95% of the blogs out there.  That's pretty astounding!  If you make a post more often than every 120 days – FOUR MONTHS – you will keep gaining traffic, grow your audience, and you'll be well on your way to becoming a successful blogger. 

In the meantime, you can increase your odds of getting heard by concentrating on your content, promoting your posts in appropriate ways, and participating in the public conversation by regularly commenting on other people's blogs. 

In the world of blogging, it's the classic tale of the tortoise and the hare.  Just keep going, slow and steady!