Making social media work for your bottom line is dependent on people sharing your content – be it a special offer, a new product announcement or a new shop opening. But there is no guarantee that your connections will share. Everyone wants their message to go viral, but there is no magic formula that you can follow for viral success.
Nevertheless, a good understanding of the dynamics of the Internet can help you to create content that will appeal to people who influence trends online and increase the shareability of your content. Content on the internet can be more risque than on traditional media. Consider ‘The Old Spice Guy’ campaign – most of the videos used in this viral campaign wouldn’t have been approved for TV airing or would have been deemed too strange, too niche for the general public. But it’s this type of strange-but-wonderful content that thrives online. Jonah Peretti who co-founded the Huffington Post and runs viral analytics company BuzzFeed writes interestingly about this topic. According to Peretti “couch potatoes don’t matter on the web, crazy people do”. Your content will be shared only if it is original and appeals to the crazy side of your potential customers (or their friends or family).
Below is a slideshow from Peretti explaining some more of his thoughts on original viral content. Part of the presentation is a pitch for the BuzzFeed business and some of the slides don’t quite make sense without the accompanying commentary, but there are some interesting points in there. You’ll find our quick four-point summary of the presentation below:
- You need to take into consideration who will make your content viral. The key audience is the “Bored At Work” brigade. You need to deliver them something they will easily understand, is easy to share and has an incentive for them to share it.
- Only some things will go viral, so try lots of different options.
- Be a Mormon, not a Jew (!) i.e. be an evangelist and spend time working out the mechanics of how your content will be shared.
- The web is ruled by maniacs like Perez Hilton and Apple fanboys, not ‘regular people’. Target the crazies.