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ROAR
- 4 Min Read
- Blog, Content Creation, Social Media
Content Strategy For Your Business: The Viral Factor
So, you’ve built out a fine-tuned content strategy for your business. You’ve curated exciting content for each channel, but alas, what about viral content?
What is viral content?
Viral content is any content (photo, video, article) that gains a lot of attention and spreads rapidly across the internet.
Viral content is designed to be shareable, making social platforms its ideal home. It starts with just one share and before you know it, its gained thousands of shares and tonnes of engagement.
Viral Platforms
Viral platforms are common in this day and age, with Twitter and TikTok taking the virality crown. The type of content on these platforms vary, although images and videos are the most common kinds to go viral. However, text-based content like articles has the ability to do so also.
TikTok
People have seen up to a million views overnight on TikTok. The general consensus is that TikTok is a little bit of a wild card. This algorithm means one video could get 5 million views, and the next one you post can review a couple hundred…. No one knows.
TikTok also offers the opportunity for sounds to go viral via trending videos. Whether it’s the renegade dance sound, or the Wes Anderson and Fantastic Mr Fox trend.
The retweet button on Twitter is easily my most used… and I’m not ashamed to admit it.
Twitter is the home of shareable one-liners. The character limit has always meant you need to state your point and make it short.
And when there is a man on a mission for free nuggets (as us all), the internet really rallies together. He’s secured almost 4 million combined retweets and quote tweets.
HELP ME PLEASE. A MAN NEEDS HIS NUGGS pic.twitter.com/4SrfHmEMo3
— Carter Wilkerson (@carterjwm) April 6, 2017
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The viral content strategy for your business
Now we’ve established what viral content is and how people have been using it. Let’s refocus on how that can affect the content strategy for your business.
I understand that a lovely beautiful content strategy is ideal because deep down we all want a simple life. Unfortunately, this is a pretty unrealistic way to look at content.
Before you dispose of your old content strategy, let’s divulge into creating viral content.
I’ll be honest that B2C businesses have it a little easier regarding viral marketing. But don’t worry B2B businesses I got you covered in this one too. 😉
Video
Video content has skyrocketed in the last few years with the rise of TikTok, Reels and a surplus of podcasts hitting the social feeds. At the start of 2023, more than nine out of 10 people report wanting to see more videos from brands.
Original Content – Keep it short, snappy, and to the point, dropping in a catchy statement or two.
Trending Content – Following the trending content, by all means, is beneficial. It can often give your business a massive push in terms of visibility and awareness. But ensure you understand the context of trends and, where possible link them back to what your business does.
When it comes to video content, short-form isn’t all that’s out there. We can’t forget the medium to long-form YouTube video content we see on a daily basis. YouTube opens the door to a whole new level of optimisation for video content as YouTube content has repeatedly appeared in SERPs when the search is right. Find out the YouTube SEO secrets to improve optimisation with our blog post.
Images
I’m all for repurposing a meme or two across the socials. The latest favourite was anything Barbie-related and the Kourtney Kardashian pregnancy reveal that went viral across Twitter and Instagram in June.
View this post on Instagram
If you’re trying to make your images go viral, make them scroll-stopping. I’m talking colours, big images, text, maybe something a little bit strange. You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do to hit the feeds these days!
But it’s not all about social, including visuals; whether you go for an infographic, a gif, or a related photo, can increase the readability of your piece. By breaking up the content a little more can keep users engaged by giving them different things to focus on.
Text
Text is hands down the most challenging method of viral content unless on Twitter.
There are some categorically crucial best practices when it comes to text content going viral:
Trends
With the helping hand of Google Trends, you can see what topics are gaining traction online. Use the explore feature, to see how well your chosen theme is trending right now.
Copy
Again ignoring Twitter… Headlines and Intro sections are the two things that attract and retain most readers that land on your article.
Headlines – Make them special, and draw the reader in from the offset. Plain old articles and headlines aren’t going to cut it in this digital space anymore.
Intro – So you’ve hooked them with the headline and they want to read more. Don’t lose them at this stage! Keep it flowing and interesting straight off the back of that gripping headline you chose.
By considering these factors your can add ‘The viral factor’ to the content strategy for your business. You are leaving room for some more free-hand content that engages users and is shareable across platforms.
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