5 Ways to Make Your Content Viral

As a social media and community manager, the #1 question clients ask me is:

There is no exact formula for ensuring viral success. However, there are several things you can do ahead of time to make sure your brand is primed to go viral. Here are 5 best practices I’ve observed in working with brands to create and spread great social content online.

People care about stories, not marketing pitches, which is why Deborah Marquardt, Senior VP of Content Strategy and Partnerships for L’Oreal, advises brands to never say to themselves, “Let’s create a viral video”. Instead, brands should approach creating viral content as a way to tell a compelling and engaging story.

Building a strong story around your product – and making sure your product delivers on what you promise – is the first step to developing viral content. Remember, the opposite of viral isn’t hate. It’s apathy. The worst thing that you can do as a brand is bore your audience.  So don’t be afraid to evoke a strong emotional reaction from your audience! Keep your message simple, too. Case in point: last year’s super popular music video, “Gangnam Style,” has exactly 3 words of English but over 480 million views.

In the digital age, sharing is more than just caring. Social Share buttons enable your fans to spread the word about your content to their social networks with just 1 click of their mouse. Make it as easy as possible for your fans to do your work for you: put share buttons EVERYWHERE. Not only should there be Share buttons integrated throughout key areas of your product, but you should also have visible Share buttons and links on your website, blog, newsletters, and other collateral. The best and most viral brands let their fans do the talking.

Your audience is dumber than someone who’s stoned. A study found that multitasking – or switching tasks more than 10 times in a day – drops your IQ points lower than someone who’s been smoking marijuana. I guarantee that as your audience is perusing your product or site, they’re also checking and answering emails, playing games on Facebook, browsing multiple websites simultaneously, running several desktop programs, chatting on IM, and texting on their phones.

In short, your average user is constantly being interrupted and distracted from your content. For you to cut through the digital noise, your message needs to be short, simple, and clear. Tell your audience exactly what they need to do with your product. Is it to click here to download? Go to your brand’s Facebook Page to enter a contest? Or is it as simple as to click the share button and tell their friends? Whatever your goal is for your users, be as direct and as straightforward as possible.

Too often I see brands omit commenting functionality on their blogs, YouTube, and other social areas. Whether this is a simple oversight or fear of fan backlash, the result is the same: your fans don’t have an easy way to talk to or about you and make you the hottest topic to hit the web.

Don’t make this mistake. Instead, empower your most passionate brand ambassadors to return to your site or product again and again to engage in discussion. Keeping your brand or product as a hot topic requires space for your fans to talk.

Finally, the unexpected (and sometimes unpopular) step for some companies: pay for it. We all want to be a laughing baby that gets millions of views because we’re just that cute. However, the reality is that most brands pour millions of dollars into their marketing and advertising their products to ensure word gets out. Zynga spent millions advertising FarmVille during launch. Old Spice, the campaign your campaign could smell like, invested in traditional marketing and PR, including a SuperBowl commercial, in addition to its YouTube campaign.

Talk doesn’t always come cheap. For every one-hit wonder viral video, there are millions of others that are lost in the digital landscape. But with planning and forethought, you can take the steps to set up your campaign for success and not failure.

J.Lowe

Social Media Manager