What does it take to create contagious content built for sharing? Here’s a look at the science behind viral content and critical strategies to bake viral potential into everything you create.
In the noisy world of content marketing, creating something that stands out and gets widely shared can feel like winning the lottery. But viral content creation isn’t just luck - it’s a skill to hone and master. By understanding what drives people to share and optimising content accordingly, marketers can engineer virality.
What does it take to create contagious content built for sharing in the digital age? Here’s a look at the science behind viral content and critical strategies to bake viral potential into everything you create.
Before crafting viral content, it’s essential to understand what qualities make something spread. What exactly gives content “shareability”? The viral potential of content boils down to 3 key factors:
Engagement - Does the content stimulate powerful emotions or interests that make people want to interact with it?
Resonance - Does the content reflect issues, ideas, or cultural elements with which the target audience connects?
Shareability - Does the content inspire social sharing by being informative, funny, helpful, or entertaining to one’s peers?
Content that ranks highly across these three viral factors has a high chance of being organically shared and promoted through social networks. Analysing examples of your top-performing content can reveal what resonates most with your audience. Track engagement metrics like time on page, repeat views, likes, and shares to identify winning themes and formats.
Once you pinpoint the themes and emotions that excite your audience, you can turn up the viral volume of your content by doubling down on those elements. Maintain a laser focus on customising content to get your audience to react.
1. Create shareable headlines
Compelling headlines are essential because they are the first touchpoint for engaging readers. Use curiosity-sparking questions and phrasing loaded with intrigue to capture attention quickly. For example, “You’ll Never Believe What Happened When We Tried This New Strategy” piques interest better than “Our Company Experimented with a New Strategy.”
2. Structure content for skimming
In an era of information overload, readers skim content and look for important points. Make scannability a priority through bite-sized paragraphs, generous white space, bold subheads, bulleted lists, and ample images. Pull the most shareable elements like quotes, facts, or statistics into stand-alone graphics.
3. Use the power of emotion
Content that tugs at the heartstrings or tickles the funny bone has built-in viral oomph. Take your audience on an emotional journey by incorporating personal stories, inspiring interviews, shocking statistics, or amusing anecdotes. Laughter and tears are both proven to compel sharing.
4. Tap into trends and news-jacking
Content timed around current events or trending topics gives creative hooks for virality. Reimagining popular memes or news events related to your industry provides a pre-built platform to generate shares. As an example, a software company could create a weekly roundup of tech meme reactions to industry news.
5. Incorporate social sharing
Make sharing frictionless by incorporating one-click options to repost, pin, tweet or like content from your site. Prominently display share buttons near headlines. Social sharing buttons entice people to spread content without leaving your ecosystem.
6. Reward engagement
The social proof of high engagement can kick start even more shares, so incentivise readers to interact. Run contests for commenting, offer exclusive rewards for shares, or bonus brand ambassadors. Making involvement worthwhile for readers gets more momentum behind viral lift-off.
Virality stems from carefully crafting content tailored to get a specific audience reaction. Analyse the performance of each piece of content and continue to shape future content based on insights into what your audience responds to. Ask questions like:
• Which themes and topics generate the most interest?
• What emotions or frustrations does our content tap into?
• What types of media formats work best?
• What calls to action or engagement work?
• Who are our most fervent brand ambassadors?
Relentless testing, iteration and optimisation are crucial to perpetuating virality. Monitor engagement metrics around content closely to spot trends and themes that hit home with your audience. Then, double down on those viral triggers to turn interested readers into evangelistic sharers.
In today’s fragmented mediaverse, creating content that cuts through the noise and organically spreads is a holy grail. But viral content creation is not a Crapshoot. With a strategic, data-driven approach, you can craft contagious content purpose-built to captivate your audience.
Analyse past content performance and human psychology to determine what makes your audience tick. Then, incorporate viral triggers like emotions, incentives, and social integration to light the fire of shares. The more you fine-tune content to deliver precisely what your audience wants, the more unstoppable your content’s viral momentum will become.
So, embrace your inner mad scientist and get busy concocting contagious content. The right viral content strategy can take your brand to the next level - and your content to the far corners of the web.
