In an increasingly digital world, social media plays a significant role in our personal and professional lives. As social media becomes more integral to our business activities, it can be challenging to determine what kind of content will effectively engage our audiences – a major objective for any marketer. An indicator of widespread engaging content? If it goes viral.
Imagine it. You switch on your laptop at 9am, check the analytics on the latest post you made on the company social media and it’s spreading like wildfire, gaining your business recognition overnight. This results in a surge of new followers and an increase in conversions. It sounds like a dream, right? That’s viral content; a mix of sheer luck, skill, and audience and platform know-how.
Before we go any further, let’s define what viral content is.
What is Viral Content?
Viral content is online content that gains a high level of awareness and popularity through sharing and exposure. This exposure can come from social media, search engines, email marketing, or other digital platforms.
Any type of content can become viral, ranging from videos and reels to images or even articles. Distinguishing what it takes for a piece of content to become viral has been an answer marketers have been searching for for years when in reality, there is no clear-cut answer.
What Makes Something Viral?
It’s nearly impossible to pinpoint the exact number of shares or likes that it takes to classify a piece of content as viral. It varies from market to market, from millions of likes to even a few hundred shares making an impact.
Why Is Viral Content Important For Businesses?
Through video, audio, or textual content on social media platforms, brands have the potential to reach viral status, significantly impacting growth through awareness and engagement. Virality resembles buzz marketing in this way, aiming to expand reach to gain more clients.
This level of exposure, especially from organic content, can be far more beneficial than traditional paid ads in providing tangible business results. From website traffic to lead generation and product conversions, going viral can be a game-changer for brands. It has the power to elevate brands from unknown to well-known almost overnight.
How To Master Viral Content
Focusing solely on creating viral content can harm the authenticity and quality of your marketing strategy.
It’s important to prioritise high-quality, shareable content that resonates with your target audience. Factors such as emotion, relatability, and authenticity play a significant role in making successful content, and only by understanding these factors can you increase the likelihood of achieving viral success.
By maximising your efforts to create successful content, you improve the awareness of your brand, even if the post doesn’t reach viral audiences.
Our Best Practices for Successful (and Potentially Viral) Content
1. Create content that provides value
Far too many brands are wasting resources creating content that doesn’t connect with the needs of their audience. If you stand any chance of your content going viral, you need to be providing content that is valuable to your audience.
This means understanding your customer’s needs and what they hope to achieve when interacting with your content. With this knowledge, you can align your content strategy around their goals rather than solely promoting your business. By answering questions, educating your audience, or simply entertaining them, you stand to boost your engagement, improving your chances of virality.
2. Authenticity is the key to connectivity
In a world of overly polished content, it’s understandable why audiences sometimes fail to connect with content. Prioritising authenticity in your content is a great way to ensure you connect with your audiences; users value genuine connections, not cold content that solely pushes an agenda.
Authenticity looks different for every business. For some, this may be embracing UGC content posted with consistency and transparency, while for others, this may be incorporating storytelling into your marketing and ensuring all content is purpose-driven.
No matter how you approach authenticity, the results are the same: you build trust and loyalty among your audience, boosting retention and revenue. By improving these areas, your content stands better chance at reaching viral attention.
3. Join trending conversations
Trending topics can significantly impact the popularity of content. In today’s digital world, businesses must keep up with trending content on social media and utilise them when possible. Not every topic will be relevant to your business, but aligning your content with current trends can help you engage with an interested audience and expand your reach.
Adapting your content strategy to incorporate social media trends can increase your visibility and engagement rate, thus the potential for your content to go viral. However, it’s crucial to maintain authenticity and stay true to your brand.
4. Consider shareworthiness
The whole premise of viral content is creating something people want to engage with and share across their own channels. Considering the shareworthiness of your content can not only improve your chances of going viral and the overall success of your marketing strategy.
A way to gauge if your content is worth sharing is if your employees share it. For most businesses, their employees will also be customers, so if they aren’t willingly sharing our content across their business networks and personal channels, you likely need to reassess this area of your content strategy.
To improve the shareworthiness of your content, think creatively and step out of the box. What are your competitors failing to create? What resources aren’t available online? Plugging these gaps answers a demand and increases the chance of your content being shared.
5. Utilise hashtags and keywords
Having an understanding of SEO and social media trends plays an integral part in boosting reach and engagement. Carefully selecting relevant keywords and hashtags can refine content strategy, helping it reach a wider, engaged audience. Targeting keywords that relate to your current and prospective customers’ needs can help you attract more traffic to your website, just as using relevant hashtags can help boost your reach on social media channels.
Keyword density may vary, so using keyword research tools can greatly assist in improving your SEO and help identify the top keywords in your specific industry and niche.
Viral Content at Redu
Here at Redu, we don’t just know how to create successful, viral content – we have achieved it. Using our authentic, tailored UGC content strategy, we have had multiple pieces of content go viral, not only boosting the reach of our channels but also results for our partners.
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We Know Content
We know how important successful content can be for driving business success and reaching viral heights – and we’d love to share our expertise with you.
Whether that’s a one-off piece of content to promote a campaign or a long-term partnership that allows us to be a part of your content journey, we know consumers and how to reach them.
Reach out to a member of the Redu team today to discuss a content collaboration!