Even those who stay confined to the realm of YouTube manage to make names for themselves; Internet celebrities are the people that the new generation wants to become. So for those who are interested, how do they spread their work to the further corners of the Internet? The answer is to go viral.

Don’t Underestimate Social Networks

MySpace introduced a kind of connectivity that no one had seen before, and then Facebook perfected it. Regardless of what ultimately happens to Facebook, the social Internet is here to stay, and it’s a vital part of the workings of YouTube.

While YouTube has some social features in and of itself, it’s already integrated into various networks, and it makes it easy for producers to share their Facebook and Twitter pages with the masses. Even when there is just a trickle of people liking and friending a YouTube personality on Facebook, it provides a platform for exponential growth. Updates can be spread to thousands of people at once, and each person that shares a video might create new fans. Likewise, free software such as audacity download is popping up all over the internet to make usability available to an even wider audience.

It’s About Personality

Videos that provide valuable information will get some hits, but the most popular people on YouTube have personality. It is a place where success is based almost solely on a popularity contest. That doesn’t mean that it’s a free-for-all, and that every person should try to do outlandish things in order to get attention. Whatever personality someone presents to the world should match his desired brand, and it should align with the core purpose of his videos. If someone is just trying to market something, his strategy will be very different than someone who wants to make Youtube a source of revenue unto itself, and he needs to get people to respond in the right way in order to achieve his goals.

Even if Videos are the Product, Merchandise Makes Them More Lucrative

There aren’t many YouTube partners that don’t have their own site and their own merchandise plastered with their logos. The key to running a successful Internet business is to split it into various interconnecting parts. That’s the reason that social networking is so important, and it’s why anyone who wants to turn YouTube into a career needs to branch out into other things. Once someone becomes a YouTube partner, revenue will ebb and flow from any content that he’s posted, but it’s unlikely he’ll be able to live off of that for any length of time if he’s not putting out tons of content. Offering other products and services helps to create a buffer so that if for some reason he can’t keep up with his usual workload, the other things that he’s set in place will help pick up the slack.

SEO is for More Than Static Web Pages

Anyone who has been on the Internet for any length of time is aware of search engine optimization, but what may not be so obvious is that things like video titles can make or break the content that someone posts. An optimized title makes it far more likely that random people will stumble across what someone has posted, and it also increases someone’s odds of making it onto the most viewed list on YouTube’s front page. It’s a small boost to be sure, but would-be entrepreneurs can’t allow any opportunities to slip through the cracks.

Talking to Yourself Isn’t Just for Crazy People

Nothing gets people talking like conflict, and there’s nothing to stop YouTube power users from having multiple accounts. As counterintuitive as it may seem, using an alt to fake a conversation can spark a slew of comments that cause people to spread the video around, and as more people jump into the conversation, the video spreads further. It might seem a little underhanded to some, but it’s 100 percent within the rules and it works.

Planning for the Long-Term

Becoming a one-hit wonder on YouTube is fairly easy. In fact, it’s so easy that cats have done it. Sustaining a large viewership is another matter entirely, and it’s necessary in order to make any decent money with YouTube. That means content can’t be ignored, but adopting a style that people respond to is a must. That means that SEO is important, but it’s to be held in equal regard as titling videos for a human audience. Probably the best thing that would-be YouTube celebrities could do is study what other YouTube celebrities have done, take notes, and create a strategy that integrates his own unique style with proven tactics.

Amy Nielson is an avid blogger who writes often for tech blogs. You can follow her on Twitter @NielsonAmy.