Viral Content: Five tips to make sure your customers catch the bug

Every client, content creator and publisher wants their content to go ‘viral’, be seen, liked, and shared by millions on the Internet. But is it possible to design content to increase the chances of its virality? 

Yes! 

Here are five best practices that can increase the likelihood of your content trending and grabbing attention, online. 

Invoke Strong Emotions 

Digital publishers and original content creators create a subscriber base across social media platforms over the years by observing and learning from what works with audiences on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. And most digital publishers can vouch for the fact that emotional content, which arouses strong reactions in people works. 

Humour Works Best 

If your video or meme or sketch is genuinely funny, it has a very high possibility of being shared. But you can experiment and create memes, videos, and articles designed to evoke pride, empathy, awe or more rarely anxiety, anger and sadness. You can also make people sit up and take notice with a surprising, touching, sentimental story. 

Experience shows that positive stories work better than negative ones. Nowadays, digital publishers work closely with brands and tap into humour to generate visibility around a new service or product, depending on a specific platform and demographic. People are more open to sharing practically useful feel good content, or funny newsworthy stories organically. 

Image Posts and Visually Strong Content is Key 

Over time, we have noticed that image posts and visual content works. Posts must use eye-catching fonts, and the message must be easy to understand, and share. So, ensure that you include a way to share on WhatsApp, Facebook via a post or Messenger, Instagram and Twitter. 

Be Consistent 

Most successful channels post memes, videos and articles at a very high frequency, every single day. The more content you post, the more the chances of success. Strong publishers have an entire team of meme creators, writers, and trend spotters, making sure that the frequency between posts doesn’t flag, 24/7, 365 days a year. 

This takes an incredible amount of work, because conversations are always happening and snowballing into ‘viral’ events online. In our experience, consistency is very important. Post good stuff, and post often. This helps keep audiences engaged to your platform as they keep coming back to check for the latest updates, or keep sharing your content, as it is being created, throughout the day. 

Identify and Create Social Currency 

Audiences online have FOMO - or the Fear of Missing Out. Each of us has a desire to be a part of the cultural conversation and know what’s up. Good publishers understand people’s need to participate in whatever the world is talking about. To make viral content it is important you watch Twitter trends very careful, go through multiple newspapers, consume YouTube content and keep an eye on what is happening in popular culture. This enables you to identify what is changing and evolving online before others do and snowball it into something bigger. 

Brands and advertisers can reinforce their currency, by being a part of what is trending. This requires them to be agile and move fast. Partnering with a publisher helps brands ride the wave and be a part of the latest newsworthy IPL moment, share in the nation’s obsession with Priya Prakash’s and leverage it to create a buzz around their product, service or brand. 

(Shahid Javed Ansari is Founder and CEO of RVCJ Media, digital publishers and original content creators, with a subscriber base of 20 million across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.)

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