Best Practices for Creating Viral Content

Strategic viral marketing, when done right can help your brand awareness and build loyalty in your customers. These nine tips can help brands achieve long-term growth.

Know Your Target Audience

Defining your target audience–a group of people that will most probably have an interest in your brand or product, and often share interests, hobbies, and behaviors– will be an important first step in trying to go viral. Pay attention to how your audience interacts with your brand and why they follow it, in addition to external factors.

Post at the right place and time

Social media platforms all have unique audiences and unique functions within the vast ecosystem. When you figure out your target audience, you should then pinpoint the flatforms that the audience spends most of their time on as well as why, and figure out the times your audience is the most engaged. Posting at an optimal time can give you an advantage in helping your content stand out.

Creating Emotional Connection

If you want a community that is consistently engaged with your brand, putting the work into creating a strong emotional connection will be vital. Being aware of emotions that you want your audience to assign your brand, and use the content you make to instill the feeling your audience trusts you. When you make stir an emotional resonance in your audience, you compel them to take action.

Quality over quantity

For a better chance of going viral, it’s more effective to spend time making quality content instead of pumping out a lot of content. Overproducing or posting just to post can cause your audience to tune you out, decrease morale with your team, as well as negatively affect your engagement.

Authenticity

Authenticity is another key component. Creating content that is genuine, original, and has ties back to your brand’s identity, can help you come across as authentic to your audience. Going through a checklist can help you determine if your content achieves authenticity:

• Does your content resonate in some way with your target audience?

• Does your audience feel like you understand them?

• Do you stay true to your brand?

Audience Participation

User-generated content, unpaid or unsponsored social posts made about your business, can be an invaluable resource for your viral campaign. Directly asking your audience for the type of content you would like to share is one of the best ways to gather UGC, as well as making hashtags and hosting contests to nudge your audience to join in.

Useful and Shareable

Consider making your content that can be quickly digested that’s still relevant but also useful enough to be shared. Infographics, short videos, and interactive content are good examples of this.

Partner With influencers and creators

Influencers and creators can be an important part of your overall marketing strategy since influencers help your viral marketing campaign as they can help the brand’s reach. Make sure you find a creator whose brand aligns with the mission of your brand, and whose audience overlaps with yours, as well as knowing what metrics are the most important.

Current trends

Being aware of current trends can help you cash in on virality, but also don’t attempt to be a part of every trend. Pay attention to find out which conversations are taking place concerning your brand and industry. Should the conversation your community partake in happen to intersect with any viral posts or campaigns, try acting fast and adding your own flair to the trend.

Conclusion

Even though going viral can’t be a hundred percent guaranteed, there are things to learn and ways you can gear your content to help have a long-term reach. Using these tips can help your content resonate with the right audience.