Viral Content – You Can Get Some of That!
Here are 10 simple tricks to make viral content strategy!
Viral content is not a factor of “dumb luck” nor is it random. It occurs because very specific strategies have been put into place to spread that content as far and as wide as possible. You may not get a million views, unless you have a talking cat, but you can substantially increase your shares by putting some very simple things into place. Here are 10 of those very simple things to make you viral content strategy!
YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE
Yes
you have probably heard this before, but it does bear repeating. You cannot afford to be absent from any social media opportunity. Why? Because you are going to post wonderful content, news alerts, great funny things, and teasers to your business blog. And you are going to request that all of your friends, colleagues, business associates, family members, etc. to share your content daily. And if the content you post there is engaging, fun, educational, and filled with ways for people to interact with you and each other, you will realize a huge increase in readers – readers who will then follow the link back to your site for more quality content on your blog. Using social media is truly the domino effect of content marketing today! That will be your viral content!
BE THE NEWSBOY
Everyone gets the top stories when they get online first thing in the morning. What they don’t get are really cool “buried” stories that never make it to the front page of Yahoo news. Your job is to comb the web daily for the unique, the humorous, the item that may impact lots of people, and be the first to report it on your social media page and your blog. Readers will come to expect that you have unique and interesting stories and they will keep coming back for more. (They also share with their friends and family, who will easily develop an interest in “coming by” every day to see what your new “alert” is! This takes time away from your business duties, but paying a college kid to do this will be really worth the effort. Just set parameters for the stories – you don’t want to offend. Set up a process by which you approve of the story content before your reporter writes it up.
STAY CURRENT
Read the blogs and forums of others, whether they are related or not. Discover what they are writing that seems to have a large following. “Steal” those ideas and create your own posts on related topics. And when you read a post that interests you, comment on it and invite your readers to access it and comment on it too. You want to be seen as the individual who will always keep your readers up to date on the latest in everything!
CREATIVITY AND HUMOR REIGN
Readers don’t stay unless what is provided for them to read is really engaging. They love humor and they love creative ways of presenting information. We all cannot be creative writers, and we all don’t have a great sense of humor to come up with one-liners, jokes, and humorous tales. But we all know people who do have these talents. You know that friend who always has you laughing with his witty and funny remarks? Put him/her to work for you! Provide a topic and let him/her add the creative and funny touches. Readers who are entertained this way always come back for more, and they do share funny content with everyone they know! Your readers will share interesting and entertaining stories read. They will help build the viral content.
INTERACT WITH YOUR READERS
You will have to use all of the current methods to encourage conversations with your readers. This means that you will have the apps on your business blog platform for readers to comment, to engage each other in conversations, and for them to speak directly to you as well. And, you, of course, will respond to everything addressed to you and to comment threads in which readers are participating. On your social media pages, ask for comments and reactions, design fun surveys for them to take and then to share with others. We have all seen those surveys on Facebook like “What 80’s song are you?” or “Who were you in your past life?” These are there because they tend to go viral.
RUN THE ANALYTICS
These are such easy tools these days. You can use analytics tools to do keyword research to find what your readers are looking for in the way of information, problem solutions and what they are reading heavily. Gear your posts and threads to these same things. And when you create post and articles, be certain that you have all of the social media share buttons for reader use, prominently displayed!
KNOW THE ONLINE BEHAVIORS OF YOUR CUSTOMER BASE
Again, you can use analytics tools to learn when your typical reader is online, provided you have taken the time to interact with your typical readers and get to know them. Once you have this information, you will want to schedule your post and article releases to match those times when they are online, both the times of day and night and the days of the week. Most blog platforms will allow you to set up a publication schedule – use it!
LINK TO PREVIOUS POSTS
Readers appreciate convenience along with their searches for information or solutions to their problems. You may have a great post today on a specific topic but you also remember that you posted related information some weeks back. In today’s post, put a link back to that earlier post that the reader can access with just one click – more information and easy to get too!
WHICH SOCIAL MEDIA SITES ARE MOST ACTIVE FOR YOU
You will be able to easily get a feel for which of your social media pages are getting the most comments, shares, and visits. Focus on those that are the most popular for really frequent content. It’s sort of like the market research that used to be conducted years ago to find out which local TV stations were the most popular, so businesses could advertise there the most.
YOUR CONTENT MUST “POP”
This bears repeating as well. Everything you write must have value. It must bring a good laugh; it must tell a memorable story; it must provide new information and/or solve a problem; and, you will be seen as someone who truly has an interest in your readers getting what they need if you provide them with links to other resources. This solidifies your reputation as a bit of an “expert,” because you know where the good information is!
None of these strategies is difficult, if you have the skills to implement them or the ability to find those with the skills. The return on investment of your time and a bit of money will be huge
And if you ever do get a talking cat, be sure to use it!
Leave a Reply