Getting a Shot at Going Viral Online

Everybody wants their content to go viral online. It’s the No. 1 way to reach a huge audience on social media. The secret is an elusive creature, and no one can make you any guarantees. However, there are a few things you can do to help. It might not give you success each and every time, but even if you don’t get to viral status, you can definitely increase your traffic, and that’s a pretty decent consolation prize.

Stay Current

Current material is the Internet’s version of real estate’s “location, location, location.” No one wants to read about the news they heard last night, let alone last week. However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t always post about your industry. You can post about anything, but keeping your niche current may take a bit more work. Knowing your target audience, no matter how small, is vital to producing high-quality, relevant content.

Be Funny

If you can make a post that someone laughs out loud at, they’re almost guaranteed to share it with their friends. It’s even better if you’ve managed to make good, solid advice funny, or related it to something other people are likely to encounter in their work or lives. You may not automatically think of something funny to post about within your market, but I promise you that someone has. If you discuss it with enough people, someone is bound to make a joke, and you suddenly have a starting point!

Memes are very popular now, and you can do almost anything that’s partially original. If you have a joke that goes around the office (and it’s not offensive to anyone), turn it into a meme for your company’s Facebook page.

Drop a Name

Did you recently discover an R&B artist has a fascination with finding forklift parts online? That’s cool, I’m sure some stars have much stranger habits. He might be a big DIYer and is looking into a new project, and needs to fix his forklift. So let people know!

It may not be a big star, or it may not even be a pop culture celebrity. Even if it’s just a big name in the forklift and construction industry, it adds credibility to your name and your blog, so make sure to mention it. As soon as you realize that this name is getting dropped, hop on your Twitter account and start a feed about it.

Don’t Just Rely on Your Words

Images and video go viral way more often than just text. If you check out YouTube, you’ll notice that people make videos for, quite honestly, anything and everything. Clearly, you don’t want to put up a video about “How to Pop Zits,” but you could put one up that might show a walk-through of your store. If you sell car parts, a video of some simple car repairs can get a great deal of attention, even if it’s just how to change a tire.

Let’s take a slightly more abstract idea, and say that we’re dealing with a home-remodeling site. You can tell people how good your work is until you’re blue in the face, but posting before and after images to your Facebook page is going to have a much bigger impact.

Lastly, remember that even if you do all of these things and more, you still won’t have every post go viral. You might not even have any that make it. What you will have accomplished, however, is a really good, informative, high-quality post that matters to the people reading it. In the end, that’s all you really have control over, and that’s what should matter. If a random Tweet, video or blog post goes viral, that’s awesome, and it probably will introduce more people to your content. Trying too hard can be just as deadly as not trying enough.

About The Author: 

Scott Huntington is a writer, blogger, and social media expert. He lives in Pennsylvania and with his wife and son. Follow Scott at @SMHuntington or check out his blog, blogspike.com