Recent years has seen content marketing gaining quite the popularity in the online marketing world. With the rapid introductions and innovations to technology, online marketing has come to form a major part of the marketing arena. Every business and organization understands that they need to create content that is valuable and shareable in order to ensure a place and maintain it in the business and marketing world.
The content that spreads through social networking sites, online advertisements, blog posts and various other channels is a type of content marketing which holds promises to the land of outstanding success.
However, the prevalence and popularity of content marketing has resulted into a paradoxical effect with regards to large amount of content influx. Since, nearly all companies and organizations have either embraced or are in the process of incorporating content marketing into their existing business practices and strategies, there seems to have been a content overload problem. Content is being created and published quickly and at such a swift pace that it is rapidly taking over the world with an abundant inflow of information. Thus, too much information inflow has made it impossible for your target audience to read up and appreciate your content.
Almost 100 hours of video is uploaded on YouTube each minute, of which only 1% of the videos ever exceed the 1 million viewing mark. Similarly, it is reported that of the 1500 posts that a Facebook user might be able to see, only 300 posts are likely to appear on their timeline. Moreover, according to a study conducted by Locowise, Facebook pages that have over one million ‘likes’, only 2.27% of their followers can see their posts. Back in 2012, Facebook posts by brands with numerous followers was reachable to an average of 16% users. This considerable decline by 13.73% shows that indeed there is a content overload issue which has led to the problem of content not going viral.
Strategies on How to Make Content GO Viral
Content marketing is found extremely useful by both, business owners and customers alike. This is because it plays an extremely vital role in the customer buying process of products or services. The more your content regarding the product is valuable and relevant, the more likely the possibility that the customer will make the purchase, thereby benefiting both, the business owners and the customers. Undoubtedly, content marketing is the present and the future of marketing.
However, the creation and publishing of content is not enough to relish and savor the fruits of content marketing. Equally important is the fact that you get the potential audience and customers to read the content and share it, thereby making it viral.
Here are some of the ways and strategies that a business can adopt to ensure that the content they are publishing goes viral.
Captivate your audience
Audience is the key to a viral content. After all, it is ultimately the audience that reads the content and shares it, conditional to the content being able to stand out and create value for the audience. This, sharing of the content eventually leads to content going viral.
There are a number of ways through which you can captivate and engage your audience.
Valuable information: It is a basic requirement that your content contains valuable information for the reader. No one has time to invest their time, reading a vain and pointless article, status, blog post or whatever it is. Thus, adding value to your content is the top most secret strategy of content marketing and one of the steps to ensure that it goes viral.
Clever message: Your content needs to be clever and witty. It is one of the most important factors in order to maintain the reader’s interest. Sarcasm can be used to induce cleverness and wittiness in your content.
Integrate Humor: Humor is just one of the many ways to charm your audience. Something particularly funny is likely to garner the reader’s attention. Not only does it captivate and enthrall your audience, humor is also likely to get your content shares. Thus, it will do your content good if you incorporate a joke or a prank in your content.
Incorporate a Shocking Title: Something shocking in your content will fuel up the curiosity of your targeted audience which will compel them to read the whole content. The readers are not likely to give up reading until their curiosity is satisfied.
Add Visuals: We live in a visual world. It is, perhaps, the first thing that people notice and feel attracted to when reading content, whether it be a blog post, a tweet, or a Facebook status. Adding visuals to your content makes it attractive to the potential audience and maintains their interest during the reading process. Visuals could take the form of anything from videos to images and sketches.
Attractive Design and Graphics: Similar to visuals, an attractive design to your web content triggers audience interest and possibly content share-ability. They find it much more appealing than a content which is plainly represented and might fail to maintain the interest of audience.
Practicality and Usefulness: Content that is practical and applicable to the everyday lives of the targeted audience is more likely to captivate their attention. It is also likely to be more shareable as people usually prefer to spread useful content for their friends and family to benefit from. Personalized and practical content keeps your content real by being as close to life as possible. This makes the audience feel more connected to you and helps humanize your brand, motivating them to spread your content.
Use the right online channels
The channel or network that you use is also a major factor in determining whether your content would go viral or not. There are multiple channels today that provide businesses with a platform to publish and upload their content. Social media websites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest etc. and other channels such as YouTube, Google Hangout, all offer businesses with opportunities to publish and upload their content. However, choosing the right channel and making sure that it is suitable to your business strategies and nature is extremely critical.
Some marketers choose the channel on the basis of where their audience is most likely to be found or even the popularity and usage of the social media. Facebook tends to be the largest social networking website, which is why many businesses and marketers use it for marketing purposes. Nevertheless, you can choose more than one website in order to reach to a wider set of potential customers.
Inspire an Emotional Reaction
A content that evokes an emotional reaction is likely to go viral. This is because when people care, they tend to share and talk about it. If your content does not inspire any emotional reaction, people don’t have a reason to share it or even mention it to someone.
Generate Positive Content
There is enough negativity in the world without your content contributing to it. People prefer to read content that evokes positive feelings in them and makes them happy, generally. Above all, positive content also results into a more shareable content. Thus, to make your content go viral, keep it a positive and light read for the reader. This makes the audience smile, laugh, inspire and in essence, appreciate life by uplifting their spirits.
Plant Stories in Your Content
Stories intrigue people. If you write content by integrating a story related to your product, you would most probably face an overnight popularity of your content. This is because people, generally, find stories to be interesting and captivating. Since, a successful story is likely to keep the reader guessing and on edge, it will garner an emotional reaction and curiosity, both of which coax people to share it and talk about it with their friends and family.
Create Content that Allows for Social Acceptance
There is too much social pressure today. People are looking for ways that nullify their status as a social pariah and make them more socially acceptable. As a result, they share content that makes them look cool and savvy. You can ask your marketing team to generate and create content that goes hand in hand with social acceptance.
Tie Celebrities to Your Content
Though this may seem clicked, a popular celebrity or a TV show is certainly going to generate undivided attention by audience. If your content or more specifically, your content headline contains a humor filled reference to the pop culture or a hot celebrity, people are likely to click on the link and read it. If the post or article is as fun as the headline itself, they might even share it.
Write Articles on Various Topics and Repost them
To get a wider circulation of your content, you should write blog posts and articles on a range of topics. Then you can post these articles on multiple online platforms instead of using one channel. This will allow a greater reach and connectivity to audience. However, this does not end here. You should also be reposting your articles to generate more engagement and shares from the audience. When posting your content, workout the best time which will allow the content to reach a vast number of audience.
Keep it Short
Another thing you need to consider when thinking of strategies to get your content viral is to keeping the content short. Lengthy content doesn’t interest people. Even if they start reading it, they are likely to give it up before finishing. This means that your content should be short to ensnare the audience’s attention and maintain their interest. Also, bite sized content is more shareable.
What to Avoid
Today’s landscape of so many choices means we have an increasing number of decisions to make. Content is also being produced at a rapid pace which means that audience has a lot of choice in that matter. This allows them to filter and read what they think or heard of as best. Usually it is the word of mouth that contributes into spreading content, but in terms of online marketing, content is spread by making it shareable.
Having established that, there are certain things that you need to tread carefully around and avoid for your content to go viral.
1. Even though it is important that one of your primary goal centers around keeping the content viral, too much focus on it can cause a compromise in quality and eventually numerous un-targeted audience.
2. Low quality content will never give your business the ultimate boost. Though it may attract attention initially, it will fade eventually when the customers realize the low value associated with it.
3. Do not create hype around your products too much. You need to keep the audience and potential customers interested, not bore them with too much product hype.
Marketers, all over, are continually trying to find ways to emerge from the crowd and make their content visible. However not everyone is aware on how to make their content go viral. It is important to understand the logistics of virality and how it is possible to increase probability of your content getting circulated and shared to a mass audience. After all, big budget for content marketing or even a good content is not enough to guarantee circulation. Rather, for a strong and lasting audience response with respect to the content, you need to ensure that your content is shareable.
Thus, it is important that marketers focus on increasing the content experience which will lead to increased subscribers, and eventually increased likelihood of content going viral overnight. Thereby, causing your content to become an internet sensation!
About The Author
Khalid Essam
Khalid is the Chief of Staff at AOK. He collaborates with a team of specialists to develop and implement successful digital campaigns, ensuring strategic alignment and optimal results. With strong leadership skills and a passion for innovation, Khalid drives AOK’s success by staying ahead of industry trends and fostering strong client and team relationships.