It’s the beginning of a new year and it’s time to take it up a notch. This is the year you’re going to make a name for yourself, grow your company and change the world. How are you going to use your small advertising budget to take your company viral?
Companies large and small are seeing increasing ROI from social marketing. There are no guarantees of having your content go viral, but there are some areas you can focus on to increase the chances that the world will choose your content to be the next viral break out.
Content that moves
- Connect to emotions – Viral content needs to make people smile, warm their hearts, and make them feel like you care about them and the world around you. Likeable Social launched with a wedding.
- Strong visuals – In a world of light and sound, short attention spans, and sound bites, visual is more likely to go viral than big blocks of words. Short videos and provocative pictures will make users more likely to pause long enough to share.
Where content moves
Tumblr, Pinterest and Facebook are the strongest platforms for visual marketing. Twitter is great for linking to larger content pieces, or breaking news. Use Email campaigns for upcoming events.
Put together a press release and send it to the news outlets in your area. In the 24/7 news cycle of the information age, news agencies are as hungry for content as the rest of the web. Getting a great piece of content picked up by your local network affiliates can propel you to viral prominence.
How content moves
For going viral, speed is key. Look at trending keywords on Google, Yahoo and Twitter. Use relevant keywords in your title, description and naturally throughout any written content. Use hash tags and tags to get your content into the flow of Twitter and connected on blogs and other websites in related searches.
Be sure your tags are relevant to your content. Be sure they are relevant to your users. Keep your timing in mind. Going viral is often about releasing your content at the moment your subject matter is trending with your audience.
Who you are
Be sure you know what you want your audience to take away from your marketing campaign. Viral content makes your company brand and image stand out, and you want to be remembered well.
- Make it useful – Social media increasingly feels like everyone is trying to sell something. Companies use it for advertising. Politicians use it for vote swaying. Writers use if for promotion. Stand out from the crowd by demonstrating how your company is useful.
- Be authentic – Tell the story of who you are. Put faces to the name of your company. Let the world see the human beings behind the name, their joys, their sorrows, their struggles and their triumphs.
- Be an inspiration – What’s great about who you are? Share it so that others will be inspired.
If at first you don’t succeed
Viral content is, for the most part, a happy accident. You can make your content smart, funny, inspirational, and helpful. You can pay attention to detail, and send it to everyone you can think of. In the end, you can’t make it go viral. If your first attempt doesn’t catch the cyber wave, don’t give up. Keep trying. The web needs more quality content, and even without a viral success, your efforts will build a solid following and grow your brand.
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