Social Video: Crying About Cats

This amusing online dating bio video went viral last week. At first it seems to be an amusing online dating profile video about a girl who has these ridiculous histrionic displays when she thinks about cats. Something about it seemed just a little disingenuous to me.

First, who would post such a humiliating video of themselves? Second why was this the first video posted on this account? Third, is the only other video in the account which was posted just after this one an attempt to make the account appear older? Is this just a joke? I think it might be a cleverly disguised social marketing video posted by eHarmony.

I used some of Skillman Video’s usual SEO analytics to investigate the resuls of the video on eHarmony’s visitors. As of this posting, Alexa rankings show a small increase in visitors to eHarmony following the video’s posting. Google trends also shows a spike in searches for the website. How many of the 8 million viewers navigated to the website after seeing this video? Enough to justify a video that cost nothing to make.

You might be familiar Boxxy, a mysterious vlogger who created an infuriating vlog of herself that sparked virulent debate about whether she was earnest of trolling. Entire communities of Boxxy haters and supporters waged cyber wars for weeks as the video went viral. Whereas Boxxy merely intended to satirize the typically vapid, adolescent vlogs on YouTube, eHarmony might be capitalizing on the same social video formula. If this isn’t already a deliberate social marketing scheme, then it should be.

Simple social videos like this are so easy, fast, and cheap to make, but they can have great ROI. You can’t force your video to go viral. You might not even want to, especially if you are interested in attracting B2B clients —   a more directed, professional target. But you can drive some traffic to your website by entertaining your audience with a little satire.