KONY viral video hot topic on social media

By Kelly Gagné

It’s been about a week since Joseph Kony, leader of Uganada’s rebel Lord’s Resistance Army became famous, because of one viral video on YouTube.

The video that has been such a hot topic is the KONY 2012 video by the organization Invisible Children.

Invisible Children is an organization that uses film, documentary and the power of social media to tell the stories of Uganda and the atrocities committed by Joseph Kony and his army of abducted children whom he uses as child soldiers.

Invisible Children produced their first video, Invisible Children: Rough Cut in 2006, and it was then that the video had sparked some interest when director Jason Russell began to campaign and spread awareness. Showing the video to high schools and colleges across America, Russell was able to spread awareness and pick up his numbers in support to present the cause to the White House.

Once they had the mass numbers of supporters, Russell was able to get U.S. President Barack Obama to sign off on sending 100 elite American soldiers into Uganda to help supervise and mentor the Ugandan soldiers.

However, since last October, these numbers of supporters began to forget about Kony and the issue, and this is where the viral new video comes in, as it was to regain the attention of the Western people and direct it back on the issue of Kony.

Leona Hobbs, a Loyalist print journalism graduate and director of communications at Social Media Group, was able to speak a bit about viral videos.

“Viral videos are simply those videos that achieve mass popularity – typically, they gain so much momentum online, they cross over into the mainstream. It is every marketer’s dream that a video they produce ‘goes viral’,” said Hobbs.

The Kony video had around seven million views within the first two days. By midweek, the video had about 31 million views, and after a week, the video has gotten over 75 million views, according to YouTube.

“A smart content marketer approaches creating an online video or any other branded content asset methodically. At the core, the marketer seeks to engage a target audience, or customer, with content. To do so, they must understand their audience or the customer, and what kind of information adds value for them. The content they create must effectively portray their brand message while avoiding the hard sell because they are seeking to earn the customer’s attention in a highly fragmented media environment,” said Hobbs.

“Once the video is created, the marketer must then promote it so it reaches the target audience. This can be done through owned channels like the company website and social network profiles where fans may choose to share the video with their social networks,” said Hobbs.

Which social network did you use to watch the video? Whether it was Tumblr, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter, you heard about the video from one of these, and then eventually watched the video.

Kelly Greer, 20, first heard about the Kony video from her Facebook feed and her Tumblr blog.

“I didn’t watch the video at first. I heard about it from other people, because it was all over my Facebook. So I looked into the name ‘Kony’, and then I watched the video,” said Greer.

“I was completely sold at first. The video was really well put together, and I didn’t understand why anyone would be against supporting their cause, until I started to question some of it, like how well the video was done and it must have cost them a lot of money to make,” said Greer.

As for viral videos go, the Kony 2012 video has greatly succeeded what the marketers and video Directors had hoped. It makes other charities and organizations both envy and admire the accomplishment of the cause, whether you agree with the work the organization is doing or not.