Every content marketer’s dream is to create a piece of content that goes viral and attract a lot of attention.
There is a kind of excitement and thrill that comes with it and don’t forget the attention, traffic, and revenue it comes along with.
Sounds like fun right? but there is a little problem though. Viral content can be difficult to create especially for those that are new in the online business industry.
Hey! look alive, I said it might be a little difficult ( might require some set of skills or professionalism) not impossible.
It’s the reason why I am writing this blog post. To show you how to make your content go viral.
What Is A Viral Content?
According to Backlinko.com, viral content refers to any online content that attracts a high level of awareness due to shares and exposure on social media networks, news websites, aggregators, email newsletters and search engines.
Therefore a viral content is any piece of content that catches a wide range of attention within a short period.
like an article, Neetzan Zimmerman a former employee at Gawker wrote about the reality TV star Farrah Abraham (“Teen Mom”) making a sex tape that drew almost 11 million views in 7 months.
so ask yourself this question? What makes content go viral?
What makes content go Viral?
Before I begin, I want you to think about the following questions
- Is your content making people laugh or entertaining them?
- Educating them?
- Is it helping them to get things done like a job?
- Trying to inspire and motivate them?
- Helping them discover their potentials?
- Is your content making an impact?
- Evoking emotional response?
1. How Impactful and useful your content is to your Audience
The above question boils down to how impactful and useful your content proves to be. Look you are not only creating content to increase brand awareness, generate traffic and increase your revenue only. While this is important it is not the only reason you should create content.
The average human has some basic needs that need to be met. Let your content provide some of the solutions to those problems.
Don’t focus only on the subject matter or content type. Instead, focus on what the content does for the reader said Dao Nguyen, Publisher at BuzzFeed.
2. Researching and Studying Recent Trends
Assuming you know what your audience wants might not work well. you need to stay up-to-date on all the latest trending topics and events.
The most successful producers of viral content study trends to learn what kinds of articles and videos have received the most views and shares in the past, then capitalize on these trends so their content has the best chance of also going viral says Emerson Spartz, CEO of Dose, a digital media company with 50 million unique visitors per month.
No matter your industry, getting active on social media and responding to the latest trend can be a powerful way to introduce virality.
3. Producing emotional content:
Content that evokes an emotional reaction is more likely to go viral. In a study, Jonah Berger explained that there are six emotions elicited by viral content: awe, anger, surprise, anxiety/fear, joy, and lust. That’s why video or visual content normally work well with this type of content.
For example, the Budweiser’s Someone Waits for You at Home anti-drunk driving ad.
Not only did the Ad depicted a scene that both dog owners and pet-free softies can instantly connect to but also delivers a powerful, heartbreaking message about not drinking and driving.
It’s a positive message that reinforces the company cares about safe, responsible drinking so you can always come home to your loved ones. Watch the Ad here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56b09ZyLaWk&t=1s
How To Create Viral Content
1. Know Your Audience Well.
This is the first place to start if you want your content to go viral. To evoke people’s emotions and provide them with useful content, you must know your audience.
Not every content will resonate with your audience, no matter how wonderful that content may be. If they don’t align with your audience needs it won’t fly.
Besides the typical demographic and geographical information, find out: What makes them happy? What makes them laugh? Where do they hang out? What music or favourite movies do they like? Who do they want to be like?
2. Share Visual Content
Content that includes compelling visuals gives people something tangible to connect to.
Research shows that readers remember 65% of the information they read when it includes visuals.
Articles with an image once every 75-100 words tend to get more shares than articles with fewer images.
This means that visual content is much more digestible and engaging than long-form of blogs and articles
Good images or videos tend to increase engagement, and they attract your brand to customers.
Video content like How-to guides, video tours, and product updates and demonstrations are awesome videos that can help pull traffic to your website and ultimately generate sales.
Infographics are also likely to be shared than a text-based article.
No matter the content format, add visuals, graphics, and data visualisations to tell your story. You just might get 650% more engagement and 3X the shares.
3. Research Other Brands or Companies With Viral Content
As a digital marketer or an online marketer, research is very important to your success.
Researching other company’s content can help you gain new unique ideas of your own.
Look at other websites, blogs and other materials made by your competitors or other businesses in your industry. Also, research products that have the same audience or demographic as you. Learn what content is attention-grabbing and try to study and understand the pattern in which they created it and try to create your own.
You can take small pieces of other marketing campaigns and use them to generate a whole new idea of your own.
4.Create Content That Is Easy To Share
Another way to make your content go viral is by creating content that people can easily share.
Content like a blog post, videos, images, infographics and much more can be shared by your audience, friends and family
You can do this by placing a share button within your content pieces. The share button you place should encourage them to share it on their social media.
Placing a share button makes it simple for your content to spread to a larger audience. You can also give them the option to share their message along with the content.
For example, you could write a blog post mentioning childhood Hollywood movies. At the end of the article, you can encourage readers to share the post with a message about their own childhood movies.
5. Make Use Of Influencers To Promote Your Content.
One way to quickly boost your views is to work with influencers. Influencers are influential people on social media with large followers.
People who follow influencers take their posts seriously and rely on them for quality content.
You can work with an influencer who’s relevant to your industry and ask them to share your content. This can have a powerful impact on your brand’s visibility and drive traffic to your site.
6. Experiment With Your Content
Post a lot of content and study its reception to find what works best. Try and experiment with different strategies, examine their impact, and continually refine your content by building on the strategies that perform best says Emerson Spartz, CEO at Dose.
Therefore the more content you post, the more data you will have to inform your research, which will help you improve more quickly.
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