This essay sheds light on how to create a viral video for YouTube and elucidates the key factors that cause a video to go viral. Moreover, the importance of creating viral videos to grow a brand is delineated in this essay. In the digital era, it is easier than anytime is history to create a video and render it into a viral video through the global digital distribution power of social media platforms. The technologies need to creating a viral video can encompass a smart phone, a webcam, or screen recording software program, such as Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) or Fraps. In other words, you do not need a sophisticated camcorder nor even a state of the art computer to be able to elicit a viral video. A video that is preordained to build traction as a viral video can be uncut, unedited, and simply raw video footage of something as simple as an unusual event or entertaining gameplay moment. You will not even need any type of video editing software program, such as Sony Vegas Pro nor Adobe Premiere Pro, in order to bring a viral video to fruition. Creating a viral video involves creating a context that is conducive to drawing forth viral video content or alternatively involves capturing bizarre moments that have enough oddities for creating viral video content. For instance, a natural viral video context may include someone recording video footage on their smart phone of a needless altercation, a talented performance, a humorous moment, or something extremely peculiar transpiring in a social setting without it being preplanned. Moreover, artificially creating the viral video context can involve doing something incredible, outrageous, or asinine. Viral videos often naturally feature overly exaggerated reactions to a form of stimuli. Prank videos for instance have a proclivity to go viral since they are not only humorous, asinine, outrageous, and incredibly entertaining, but also organically capture overly exaggerated reactions from the victims of the pranks. Prospective viral videos need to have enough merit to warrant being shared in order to become viral, unless they are distributed onto the highest viewed channels that have an enormous subscriber base who will watch anything uploaded onto them, irrespective the video content''s merits. Creating a viral video can be something as simple as recording a contentious two minute altercation between two people in public. Out of curiosity, viewers who are eager to ascertain other people''s reactions to an unpleasant situation may be inclined to watch the video in order to discover their reactions, especially if both parties featured on the video are becoming more vehement during the needless altercation. Videos do not always have to be amusing and captivating enough to share to go viral. Something as simple as an announcement video in which the content creator is hosting a contest or sweepstakes also has the potential to go viral, especially if the prizes are significant, since these types of videos can potentially generate substantial user activity. Viewers who desire the prizes may feel highly inclined to participate in the contest or sweepstakes and even comment on the video. Creating an announcement video to share the rules of a contest or sweepstakes is not the ideal way to create a viral video. Moreover, it is arduous to sustain growing a subscriber base, especially if your brand growth has been predicated on your ability to constantly give away free items to your audience. Creating a viral video is far less complicated than it is often perceived to be and virtually every prospective content creator already possesses the requisite recording equipment to bring a viral video to fruition with their smart phones that have built in HD cameras. Viral videos to do even necessarily need to always have merit to go viral. For instance, Rebecca Black''s Friday music video went viral and earned over 133 million video views even though some people deem it to be the worst music video of all time.