With the boom in digital media, everyone is aiming for the best. Today there are more than a million blogs available online, all of which are fighting with each other to get more views, more traffic through viral content marketing strategies.
The ultimate goal of every blog that is available is to have higher page ranking on search engines so that they have more organic traffic.
One of the best ways to get organic traffic is when your content goes viral. Now, there is no hard and fast rule or no specific guidelines that can make content go viral.
There are lots of factors that go into making viral marketing content, and you never knew what might work out for your blog and what not!
In this post today we are going to discuss everything that you need to know in order to make your content go viral.
As we just said, there are lots of factors that contribute to making content viral, and we will discuss all of them in this article. But first, we need to know what exactly viral content is. Let’s have a look.
What Is Viral Content Definition?
Any kind of content like an article or image or video, that is rapidly shared online and spreads like a virus via website links and sharing on social media is called viral content.
The memes are a classic example of viral content when they take the form of a video or image with a few lines of text that different social media pages create.
Not just memes, but any kind of content that is appealing enough to users that they keep sharing and spreading it, can be viral content.
There are various reasons that make content go viral. The most common factor is that the entertainment value should be high.
Apart from that, the content’s usefulness, the information it is providing, how visually appealing it is, its shock value, all of these contribute to making a certain kind of content viral.
Another factor that plays an important role in making content goes viral is the target audience and the reputation that the sharer holds.
Many social influences have their own channels on various social media platforms where they have millions of followers and their followers look up to them as an authority. They have an ability to reach and influence large numbers of people, who share everything they write or post.
What Makes Content Go Viral?
There are certain factors which contribute to making a content go viral. While you are writing an article or designing a meme, you have to keep a few things in mind before you publish them. Let us have a look at those factors.
1. When the content evokes emotions in readers:
Anything that arouses high-intensity emotions in readers, they are likely to be shared more.
When something amuses, or shocks or excites a reader, he shares it on his social media handles or sends it to his friends so that they can feel about the content similarly too.
The interesting part about emotion evoking content is that the content that evokes negative emotions is also highly shared and has equal capacity for being viral.
Contents that arouse negative emotions like anger and anxiety have an equally high shareable value too.
Irrespective of what kind of emotions a content is generating, readers will still want to share it after they have read it and when they find it interesting enough.
The way to resonate with your audience is to express views and opinions that are unabashed. When you do not hold back and express fearlessly, your audience develops an immediate liking to this rawness and lack of political correctness.
2. Having a practical approach:
Any kind of content that has a clear practical approach will perform better than others.
An article that has a clear call to action, that is useful, educational and has practical content is more likely to be shared extensively.
An article that a reader will find to be useful to others in terms of self-development will be shared widely. This is the reason why ‘how to’ articles do so well. This is also the reason why memes, which are basically infographics perform so well and go viral.
Content that has clear strategies that readers can apply in their day to day lives have a higher chance of going viral.
3. The readability factor:
For any content to go viral, it has to readable enough. It might be that you have written some ground-breaking factor information in your article. But if it is not readable, all the efforts will go in vain.
Ideally, if you want to check that your content is readable or not, you have to do a readability test where a student of the 9th grade should be able to read and decipher your information.
Keep the words simple enough for a ninth grade to understand, instead of using too complex words. Also, watch out for the length of the sentences.
Long sentences make readers lose interest in what they are reading and their brain is also unable to process too much information in one sentence.
4. The heading and introductory paragraph should have powerful words:
If the title of your article is not powerful and interesting enough, people won’t even open your article in the first place.
It is the headline of an article that attracts readers and a strong introduction that makes sure that readers continue reading it.
Power words are those words that trigger certain emotions in readers and they are convinced into clicking on the article, reading it and ultimately, sharing it.
The best way to come up with a great power headline is to write down 8-10 of them using different keywords and power words, twisting them and clubbing them and then finally coming up with one that has the best of all.
5. The content has to be trustworthy:
There are so many lies floating on the internet that people have a hard time believing something. So for content to go viral, you have to make sure that it is trustworthy and has a certain credibility.
You can do that by including quotes from field experts in your content. Mention sources or every information that you include in your piece. Personal stories of people and their pictures are also a great way to establish credibility.
6. The content should be visually appealing enough:
The one mistake that a lot of content creators do is that they overlook the visual factor while creating content.
When we say visual appeal, we do not just mean images, but even the typography and the layout of the article contribute to its visual appeal. Of course, adding an image can boost your article’s performance to a great extent.
The layout of the content should be proper too. Shorter paragraphs, more gaps between paragraphs contribute to an idea to the readers that the content is less cluttered.
The size of the fonts, the spacing between letters and spacing between lines, the width of the column all determine how readable and visually appealing an article is.
When your article is more visually appealing, the chances of it being shared gets higher.
What is Viral Content Marketing?
Viral content marketing is a certain marketing technique using social network platforms and other pre-existing technologies in order to increase brand awareness or to achieve other marketing goals.
This marketing technique requires a self-replicating viral method. This method can be anything, that can either be through word of mouth, or readers sharing stuff on social media handles.
Viral content marketing is kind of personal and even though it comes from a sponsor, it does not mean that the businesses involved in it are paying for the viral distribution of the content.
Most of the viral content that you will see floating on your newsfeed is actually paid by a sponsor, where they had launched the campaign or the content on their own platform or on social media pages. When readers come across this content, they share it on their social media handles.
How To Write Viral Content?
Since now you already know about the factors that make content go viral, it will be easier for you to write viral content.
However, if you think that you have it all figured out by now, you are wrong. Here are the must follow rules for you if you want to make your content viral.
Identify your target audience:
This is the basic step to follow before you write any kind of article, irrespective of whether it goes viral or not. You should know your audience the best and what they are looking for exactly.
Make sure your article triggers an emotional response in them:
We have already discussed this earlier and the importance of it. While you are writing the article, try to make your content as emotionally arousing as possible.
Focus on the giveaway factor of your article:
When you want to make your content viral, it is only possible if your content has something path-breaking to provide. If a reader has to share an article on his social media handle, he will have to find it interesting enough first. So include some groundbreaking news or fact or discovery that readers might not have heard of before.
Make sure the headline is engaging and catchy:
Again, this is something we have already discussed. Include numbers, mostly odd numbers in the beginning and then a short text that is emotionally evoking and thought-provoking.
‘How to’, ‘Tips and tricks’, ‘You can also’- these are proven to work wonders. Your headline should reflect what the readers can expect inside and it should be dramatic.
Go creative and unique with the featured image:
Like the headline, the featured image that you use also plays a great role in making your content go viral.
Build the image, make collages or edit it in an interesting way. Invest as much time as you can in the featured image.
When you use cheap Shutterstock images from the web, users will never want to open your article as it gives them a negative first impression. Your featured image should be able to tell a story, that is related to your article.
Identify the trending topics in your niche on a certain day:
Always check Google Trends and the trending section of various social media platforms to know what all is trending in your niche.
You can definitely write about general topics too, but when you write on a trending topic, your chances of going viral are higher. When something is trending, people will want to read everything about that topic.
How to Make Content Go Viral?
Apart from everything that we have told you, there are other things too to keep in mind, if you are looking to make your content viral.
So what can you do to succeed in viral content marketing?
- Don’t have to be perfect, focus on being funny.
- Keep the content short. Nobody generally has time to go through long content.
- As much as short content works better, similarly, visual content works better than written content. Make your text article as rich in picture content as possible.
- Do not underestimate the power of SEO. Research for the top keywords even before you start writing the article. Include these keywords in the headline and in the introduction as many times as possible.
- Publish the posts at peak hours. That increases the chances of making the post viral.
- Make sure to give a personal touch to your story by including examples or personal stories that are relevant to the article. That helps readers connect better to your article.
Wrapping Up:
Making content go viral is not rocket science. It is also not something that you can use an online tool for and get it done. It is a multi-faceted process, where you have to take care of certain things.
Once you get them right, your chances of producing content that will go viral gets higher and higher.