Key Tips to Make Social Media Content Go Viral
Did you know that almost 50% of the world's population uses social media? Facebook leads the pack, with a number of about 2.5 billion active users, being closely followed by YouTube, which is used by almost 2 billion people. Here's how you can increase your chances of creating viral social media content.
Begin by determining your target audience. What people will be interested and willing to share your content? Create a marketing persona, which will represent a highly targeted segment of your audience. What do these people have in common? What are their backgrounds, what makes them tick? What trending topics resonate with them? Be sure to ask as many relevant questions as possible, and then write down detailed answers to each one of them.
You can use Twitter's most popular hashtags to see what's trending, and thus get ideas for relevant content. Alternatively, you can use a social management tool to monitor the top trending topics on several platforms from within a single project window.
It's time to start a content brainstorming session. It is known that people prefer to share funny content, deeply emotional posts, dramatic articles and unbelievable (but true) stories. Can you create something along these lines that will impress your target audience?
From our experience, the easiest solution is to create content that appeals to people's emotions. You need to connect with your audience emotionally, and then get those people to absorb your content. Be aware that content which evokes negative emotions is less likely to go viral in comparison with the one that leads to awe, joy, laughter, anticipation, etc. So, if you have managed to craft your persona accurately, you should know what can please your potential readers and what frustrates them.
It's time to use a content discovery tool, which will allow you to analyze the best performing posts in your branch. Tools like BuzzSumo will show you the total number of shares, likes, retweets, etc. for each content piece in their database. Actually, BuzzSumo does much more than that, allowing you to discover relevant social media influencers who can make your potentially viral content available to a much broader audience, spy on your competitors, and much more. That's a topic for a future article, though ;)
No matter what type of content you create, avoid being salesy; instead, highlight the way in which your products or services have helped change people's lives, allowing them to live better and achieve amazing results. People will always love a delightful story, so use that to your advantage; just make sure it's a real one, which has a happy ending.
You can also tackle controversial topics; this approach has the potential to establish your company as a thought leader in the industry. Just make sure that your opinion is based on hard facts, rather than pure gut reactions.
Don't forget to amplify your content; boost its visibility by partnering with influencers, use paid ads that feature it, and more. Begin by showing your content to the top influencers, though; if it is really good, some of them will want to share it with their fans for free.
In the end, evaluate what went well and what went wrong; you want to avoid doing the same mistakes over and over. Remember that your content may not go viral from the very first post, so keep trying until you discover a winning content formula, and then improve it. Good luck!
