It is difficult to predict at what point and why one thing is shared massively on social media and another is not. What we do know is that a lot of content that goes viral has the same characteristics. This gives no guarantees, but when you combine this information, you certainly increase your chances. Do you also want to discover the secret of viral content? Then follow the six steps mentioned in this article.
Social ‘contagiousness’
When delved into this social contagion of viral content. We saw that word-of-mouth, such as fun videos that are recommended and shared by your friends, picked up well. Social sharing turned out to be a very effective way to spread content. You can start by sharing it internally, by friends and family. You can get this ball rolling with a Facebook campaign, aimed at increasing the reach of likes and friends of likes. Then it must be picked up by the public.
Why are recommendations/shares from acquaintances so important? First of all, they are much more convincing, because we trust our personal environment more. In addition, you yourself as the spreader of the message are pretty focused, because you only share certain content with people you know they may find interesting or fun.
1. Social Currency
People have a habit of sharing that which reinforces their image. We humans also like to share our opinions. This is because it triggers the same part of the brain when we are rewarded in the form of money or food. But how do you activate this?
- Be remarkable: you have to surprise people so that they feel they are seeing something special. This breaks the expectation pattern.
- By incorporating game principles: people are more likely to repeat the action because they like it.
- By making people ‘insiders’: if you share certain important information, for example a secret, with people, they will feel more quickly involved in the information made available.
2. Triggers
With triggers, you want to encourage people to do a certain action more than once. This could be at a certain event or at a certain time. If people have a certain association with something, they will be triggered to take a certain action. A very simple example is that there are people who drink a cup of milk before bed because otherwise, they cannot sleep.
3. Emotion
By playing on emotion, you give people a reason to connect with each other, which will make the information more likely to be shared.
4. Public
The more tangible something is to the general public, the sooner they will think it is relevant or important. When people see something more often, they are more likely to check it out than when they only see something pass by once. By making it noticeable, it is easier for the public to monitor.
5. Practical value
If people can help each other by sharing useful information, this will also improve the process of information dissemination. People like to help each other. Useful content can have much more value for smaller target groups than ‘the general public’.
6. Stories
Stories carry important lessons or morals. Therefore, they contribute to the principle of story distribution, also known as storytelling. People find stories interesting because there is a deeper thought behind them. The cause-and-effect principle is acquired here.
And now, go viral!
