It’s a digital world and it’s competitive. Users come across tons of content every day from brands trying extremely hard to make themselves the center of attention. But then you see a viral video of toddler singing that has millions of views or an influencer with thousands of comments on their Instagram post and you wonder, is it luck only that gets these people this much attention? How does this content explode? How does this reach millions of people?
With this huge reach, imagine if it was your branded content that went viral. Imagine the engagement, the traffic on your website, the conversions, and the sales. Oh it’s a marketers dream!
But most of us are convinced that its luck that does the magic for getting content viral. Well yes, luck does play a part but so does timing, strategy and things like attention to detail.
If you are trying to get your content viral, check these 4 boxes:
1. Create a compelling hook.
Visualize yourself scrolling through Instagram, how fast do you scroll? What catches your attention? Do you see a pattern? A post that compels in the first second you see it gets your engagement. Posts that tell users what they’re looking at upfront works best in getting attention.
This is the reason Youtubers title their videos with bold caps with compelling headlines. They even use thumbnails that are ballistic by nature bombarding the viewer with information that can grab attention. These are designed in a way to draw you to watch the video.
Another phenomenon you may have noticed is that these videos promise a response out of you once you watch them. For example: “You will cry after watching this video.” Viewers often seek out content that can trigger an emotional response from them and such headlines work best.
2. Create content worth sharing.
Now you have the viewers’ attention, but this only won’t get the content to go viral. It was only the first step. You need to deliver on what you promised. If you headline claimed to make the viewer cry, then it should at least trigger their emotions. If your thumbnail showed a man in awe of a new supercar, the supercar better be that good.
Ensure this and then only you can expect viewers to like or comment and if lucky share the content. In the engagement umbrella, the action of sharing is perhaps hardest to achieve. Users go the extra mile when they share the content with others or on their feed for e.g. on Facebook or on Instagram. And that is the golden nugget you are looking for.
We discussed how emotions can play a role in getting the content viral. This is true as people are most likely to share content when they are emotionally charged. They may be inspired, amazed, shocked and so on. Make them feel something.
A new trend in the “Viral World” is authenticity. This is becoming a popular emotional hook. Influencers traditionally shared the picture perfect version of their lives and that isn’t something most of us can connect with. To relate with content better, influencers and Youtubers are now creating content that shows their struggles, life lessons and day to day life. This is something viewers can relate to. Users want to connect and the content creator knows this. That is the part formula to get content viral. Create content that users can connect to and is worth sharing.
3. Know your audience.
Test, Test and Test. Know your audience, know the data, know the analytics. Understand your audience.
If you are an influencer, determine what area of expertise or niche you want to occupy as an industry expert. Building your brand is impossible without knowing what type of follower you want to attract.
Once you have understood your space and your audience, craft your content according to your audience’s interest only. This crafted content is most likely to get viral.
You need to know what type of content your audience likes. What is trending in your industry and what gathers most attention. This experimenting will take time and effort. But once you see patterns and notice different engagements on different posts you should get an idea what your audience interacts with most.
4. Make it visually appealing.
Visually appealing content almost always works better than average looking content. Visuals are the first encounter with your audience and you have to make them perfect enough to grab attention.
There are a number of types of content that go viral but infographics have a greater probability of getting shares provided your content is aimed at the right audience on social media. Infographics are visual posts with complex topics strategically placed in the image making them easy to understand, grasp and very easy to share. This is quite valuable in a situation where there’s a ton of content that the users have a hard time processing. However, don’t jumble and make it a mess. Create an infographic that doesn’t overwhelm the viewer. Make it easy to understand with a proper structure.
Other than infographics, there’s video content that usually gets a lot of engagement. Most industry insiders today recommend some type of video content on social media to increase the odds of content going viral. You need the keep thumbnails of these videos appealing and modern. Be it YouTube or Social Media, the sharper your visuals are, the better.
I’d recommend to keep videos short. Videos that are 9 to 15 seconds perform best although it depends on the video topic. But try to keep them under a minute as on Social media your viewer is likely viewing it on their mobile devices. For YouTube however, you are largely free to choose any video length as long as it is meaningful and keeps the viewer interested. Personally, I prefer YouTube videos that are around 10 minutes of length.
These were 4 check boxes to create content that can go viral. I hope you enjoyed this article.