Virality is a measure of the quality of content output and also the ultimate reward for a content marketer, if attained. Every marketer is striving to attain that perfect mix of message, context and medium to make sure that their prospects hit the “share” button and spread their content with their peer-group.
Viral content is the most cost-effective and the fastest way of publicizing your content on a large scale and increasing your reach. But what makes certain content tick and others not?
Here are some key ingredients that are needed in your messaging framework to make your social content go viral:
Provokes an Emotion-Positive or Negative
Whether it’s Rebecca Black’s highly criticized Friday or P&G’s heart-warming advertisement Best Job, the one thing these viral videos have in common is that they invoked strong sentiments among the viewers and incited them to share it with their peer-group. A campaign that leaves your audience in a neutral state of mind will not give them that necessary push needed to share it further.
Although positive word-of-mouth is what you should be aiming at but if in the process you got some tongue-lashing, you should not be disheartened because as they say, there is no such thing as bad publicity.
Capitalize on Recent Trends or Issues
A lot of brands ride the wave of current trending topics and issues and build their messaging framework around it. Chances of such content going viral are much higher than the ones dealing with stale or out-of-date topics and issues. Remember 2012-the year of flash-mobs where this highly energetic social dance infiltrated everything from weddings to shopping malls? Well, Tic-Tac created a fun and innovative campaign on bad mouth odor by maneuvering a flash-mob in the heart of the city. The result – a viral advertisement which made a lasting impression in people’s minds.
Make Sure Your Content Is Useful, Relevant and Practical
Always make sure that your content is unique, is giving your reader/viewers solid tips and information useful to them and last but not the least, deliver it in an interesting manner that will hold their interest. Made Man is an online portal dedicated to men that delivers interesting content on health, fitness, grooming, sports etc, created an advertisement starring Nick Offerman in support of men’s cancer research. The video which apart from showing Offerman’s ability to stuff an onion in his mouth also offers men tips on growing a mustache. The video went viral in no time with as many as 1.1 million hits and was influential in raising $120 million in funds worldwide.
Make It Interesting
If you’re dealing with products and services which are not classified as “interesting” by the lay-man do not lose heart, just because your products are not mainstream does not mean your messaging cannot be. Take this example of Air New Zealand that took something as boring as safety instructions and created something spectacular-a safety announcement in the style of JRR Tolkien’s classic series. Now who can ignore that? The trick is to make sure your content is such that it is not run-of the mill and demands attention which can be attained by following the above mentioned tips.
However, these tips are only guidelines that you can follow to ensure that your content is shareable and does not give guarantee of virality.
