4 key elements of viral content

“There are key elements of viral content that will bring more audiences to you.”

The goal of every content marketer is to have his/her information shared across digital channels by their audiences. This information spread through the content that can be shared socially, so they can increase audience sizes. The content that is spread all over the internet called viral content, either it is in the form of a video with 15 million views, an article with 1 million shares, or an infographic with 100 links. But to get more audience can feel almost unreal, it is often easier said than done. In this article, we've shared five key elements that will help you reach your target as a marketer in the savage competition of viral content. Stick with us!

Humour

A funny content doesn't only make the audience happier, but it makes them want to share it. People want to laugh together with their family and friends. So when you can inject humour to your viral content, that won’t only stop at the particular person who’s watching, reading, and or listening to it first. This is what makes funny videos are so common to go viral. Doesn’t matter if you have a conservative or highly professional brand, some entertainment won’t hurt anyone. But in creating a funny content is not always easy to get it right. You can’t go “halfway funny”, you need to be “all-out funny”. It doesn’t have to be appeared stupid or using inside jargon. You should employ a broad comedy instead. For example, the Poo-Pourri video was intelligent with broadly appealing bathroom humour.

Originality

The authenticity and of your content should be unquestionable. Why? The answer is simple; copying another’s content would get you sued. For example, Google punished a content farm Mahalo for not posting original content. But originality is not strictly about content, it’s also about the idea. That’s right, repeating the same concepts or other posts that the audience have seen before can’t really be counted as original. That strategy will also ruin one of your purposes (other than increasing audience), which is to spread information. Probably you don’t need to spread the same knowledge over and over again. People will get bored eventually. The more unique, the better.

Resonance with Audience

You can’t advertise a drink in a video just because people love drink. They don’t care about trivial stuff, but they will be attracted to common ground, universal story, something that resonates with them on an emotional level. For example, Coca-Cola made videos about peace and happiness among all people across the world. Then Dove made videos about empowering women. They offer ideas that stir people’s emotions. Psychologist Robert Plutchik is known for his wheel of emotions concept, which are joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, anticipation, anger, disgust. By integrating different emotions into your content, you can cultivate a message that resonates more effectively with your audience.

The good example can be seen in Chipotle's Scarecrow Campaign campaign. Chipotle made a video that integrated almost every emotion listed in Plutchik theory. The company promoted that Chipotle uses natural and fresh ingredients instead of the hormone-filled products fast-food chains have been known for. The dark and eerie visuals will make you feel fear at first. Then you lose the trust of what’s being put into the food you’ve been eating. You will also feel anger, disgusted, and sadness when you see hormone-filled chickens or sad cows. At the end, the video takes you to the joyful feeling when the scarecrow brings his fresh products to the market.

Generating A Discussion

You need to be able to create content that will be the long-lasting topic of discussion. You can either make your content surprising, interesting, or even both. To make it more surprising, you can give a little bit of controversy. According to Joel Ackerman, Chief Creative Genius at Ackermania Creative and most famously the director of Poo-Pourri’s “Girls Don’t Poop” video, you can spark controversy, but don’t offend the wrong audience.

For example, Joel just directed an ad for a company called GlassesUSA.com. It asked the question, “Why do we think people who wear glasses are much smarter?” Then its answer: “Because people who wear glasses actually are smarter.” Some people online got offended, but those are the people who were supposed to be offend; people who don’t wear glasses. It’s not a heavy controversy that will get your brand a punishment, but rather just something that gets people talking. Another way is you can leave audiences with question. It doesn’t mean you need to have an incomplete content, but make something at the end of your content that will make reflect on how they can implement the knowledge you provided.

Conclusion

There are so many different approach to make your contents go viral. Try every single one of them, which you can start from the one you think most suitable. Don’t stop try another approach if one turns out to be failed. Another thing to consider is the internet can be surprising. You will never know which one of your efforts finally give fruitful outcomes and maybe the time is ticking a little bit late for you. You could post a content today and it will go viral months later. So keep striving to create contagious content and set sail to go viral now.

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Reference

https://www.jeffbullas.com/7-key-elements-for-viral-content/

https://www.inc.com/kelsey-libert/7-elements-of-a-viral-content-marketing-campaign.html

https://seo.co/viral-marketing/

https://sproutsocial.com/insights/how-to-go-viral/

https://hawkemedia.com/blog/7-elements-viral-videos-joel-ackerman