I accidentally made a video that went viral on Facebook. As I write this, it has 3.7 million views and is still going strong, adding about 50,000 views daily.

My friend, Hannah Hudson, was visiting and while we chatted I was puttering in my kitchen putting away groceries. I had some plastic bags to put away, so I started storing them using  a method I learned in the 90s.

Hannah was astonished and said she had to take a picture. I said, “Well, we may as well do a video and put it on Facebook.”

So she whipped out her smart phone and we shot the video, which she posted on her Facebook page.

I had a feeling it was going to go viral, but to me viral meant, say, 80,000 views in a few months.

In about a week, we were up to a million views. I thought it was great butI had no thought of making commercial use of it. After all, it was just a tip about a cool way to store plastic bags.

Hannah thought otherwise.  She went into the post, edited it, and startedsending folks to my Facebook business page.

At the time, my Facebook page had about 195 “Likes.” As I write this I now have 1772 likes and they are increasing every day.

Now why didn’t I — Miss Marketing — think of that?

I noticed that many of those new “fans” are reading my business-oriented posts and engaging with them. Someday one of those folks is going to hire me or give me a good referral. 

The video was poorly done. Hannah even shot it using the wrong orientation so the image is very narrow. I look terrible, no makeup — I’m really 37. But it’s gone viral nonetheless, thanks to Hannah making it a public post, and I’m getting a ton of likes to my business page.

Now I’ve posted it on You Tube. If it gets some traction, maybe it will go viral there, too. We probably should have posted it on You Tube first and then embedded it on Facebook.

Between the You Tube version and the Facebook version and other places I decide to post it, this video will help my business by …

1. Getting more likes on my Facebook business page
2. Sending more folks to my website
3. Getting more sign-ups to my email newsletter
4. As folks embed the You Tube link on their websites, it will send “link juice” to my website helping my rankings to stay higher
5. And if it really goes viral on YouTube, I’ll get some royalties. I’ll let you know if that ever happens.

EASY WEB TIP #206: You never know when a video will go viral and help your business in ways you can’t think of. Look for opportunities to create videos about anything interesting.

P.S. For years, I’ve been nagging Hannah to start a Facebook social media business because she’s so knowledgeable about Facebook. If you want to give her a try, you can connect with her here.