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How I created a viral sports video (copy this)
Chris Clark
December 26, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
I created a viral sports video.
I’m going to tell you how I did it.
I’ll also give you some tips and insights into how you can apply the same methods to your content creation.
(Including why you don’t actually need to be obsessed with going viral.)
What happened?
In March of 2020, I was at football practice for the University of South Carolina when I spotted five-star freshman running back MarShawn Lloyd going through drills.
He looked quick. “Fans will like this,” I thought.
I pulled out my phone and took a five-second video of MarShawn performing one of the drills.
I threw it on my Twitter account with a five-word caption, plus three emojis.
You can see the post here.
My colleague at GamecockCentral.com, Wes Mitchell repurposed the clip for our TikTok account.
He’s cooler and more tech-savvy than I am, so he spliced in some music and his own six-word caption.
Here are the results from the video:
Twitter/X:
256,000 Impressions
131,000 Video Views
35,052 Engagements
2,600 Likes
581 Retweets
68 Replies
62 Bookmarks
Tik Tok
360,800 Views
12,900 Likes
216 Bookmarks
56 Comments
The video was picked up by national news outlets and did big numbers.
More importantly, it helped our visibility with our hyper niche, which is South Carolina football fans.
Why did the video work?
The subject matters.
The video featured someone that fans cared about, wanted to see more of, and were fascinated by.
And we filmed him doing something cool!
(Question to ask yourself: who - or what - does your audience care about?)
It was short.
People have short attention spans.
Viral videos are usually easily digestible.
It showed what fans wanted to see and that’s it.
The video was five seconds long.
Our captions were both five words.
It took me about five seconds to post it.
(It probably took a little longer to actually post it, but you get the point.)
It had the right touches.
On Twitter, I added a few 🧐 emojis to add some intrigue.
Wes added the music on TikTok that suited the clip perfectly.
(If you aren’t cool, lean on a cooler teammate to help you with the right touches.)
Today’s tip
It’s not a bad thing to go viral - unless you’re going viral for the wrong reasons.
Don’t become obsessed with it.
For some sports businesses, it’s more important than others.
People who see your video aren’t necessarily going to become big fans or customers of yours.
Some are what I’d call “drive-bys”; they will see the content and move on.
In other cases, it can help with your brand awareness or earn you new followers.
Rather than pressuring yourself to think of a video that is going to do huge numbers once, think about creating consistent, quality content over a long period of time.
If that video was the only video, the only piece of content we ever posted to our social media accounts, it would not matter.
Posting one viral video does not build a business for you.
At the time we posted the video discussed here, our social media accounts had lots of followers. That helped the numbers, sure.
So don’t get discouraged if you’re posting content and it’s not blowing up.
The cool thing about the Internet is that you don’t have to be famous to have something very valuable for people.
And if you post the right content, you will eventually be rewarded.
If you need help with your sports company’s video and/or content strategy, here are two resources for you.