In a 2018 article discussing three winning viral marketing campaigns from years past, we mentioned a number of qualities each campaign shared that led to their spreading like wildfire.
Today, we’re going to dig a bit deeper into what these qualities are, and how you can implement them into your marketing campaigns in the future.
To be sure, viral content isn’t viral until… it’s gone viral. In other words, any content can become viral content—as long as it adheres to the following best practices.
More from PostFunnel on viral content:
Creating Viral Content Begins With a Powerful and Engaging Headline…
Three Recent Viral Marketing Moments—and What You Can Learn from Them
Transform into a Marketing Unicorn with Viral Content
Viral Content is Authentic
As we said in the previous article, viral content must be true to what it is, what it represents, and how it engages the audience.
Put another way, authentic content is much more likely to go viral than inauthentic, commercially-focused ads. In fact, Stackla’s Consumer Content Report found that 86% of consumers say authenticity “is important when deciding what brands they like and support.”
What’s more, the report also shows that consumers typically believe that less than half of all brands exude authenticity. This, in many ways, is the crux of why some content goes viral while other campaigns fade into obscurity: the less authentic a piece of content seems, the less chance it has of going viral.
Of course, walking the line between truly authentic and faux authentic isn’t easy. One false step or missed mark in your campaign, and your hopes of going viral will almost certainly be dashed.
But, there is a way to skirt the issue altogether:
Get your audience involved in the action.
As Stackla’s report shows, the majority of consumers agree that user-generated content always comes off as more authentic than branded content.
(Respondents also said they can differentiate between branded or user-generated content 70% of the time—meaning faux-authentic content should always be a no-go.)
Now, not just any ol’ UGC is guaranteed to go viral. To be sure, the vast majority of content on the internet gets swept away without ever being noticed in the first place.
This is where you come in.
While you certainly want your audience to create their own unique content featuring your brand in some way, you also want to give them some direction in how best to do so. In other words, you need to solicit user-generated content that showcases the authenticity of both your audience and your brand—as well as the authenticity of the relationship between the two.
Take, for example, Aerie’s popular “Aerie Real” campaign, in which the lingerie company solicited photos and videos of their customers to be shared via social media.
The premise of the campaign is that the photos would be published sans any editing—allowing women to celebrate their bodies in a truly authentic manner.
This campaign’s authenticity-highlighting approach has led to success for Aerie from a business perspective. According to Business Insider, the company has experienced sustained growth over 16 consecutive quarters as of 2018.
Canada’s tourism organization, Destination Canada, took a similar approach when they launched their “Found in Canada” marketing campaign.
The idea was to simply comb through various social media platforms looking for user-generated content featuring a variety of tourist spots in Canada. Over 2,000 photos and media clips later, Destination Canada had created a piece of content that would end up generating over 1.2 million views on YouTube alone.
Is it possible to create authentic, branded content without UGC? Sure—and we’ll come back to this in a moment.
Still, it’s important to understand that your audience sees UGC as the most authentic type of content there is. When your audience sees a piece of authentic content featuring people just like them, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll share it with others in their community.
Viral Content Stirs Up Emotions
Content that doesn’t stir up its audience’s emotions has little hope of going viral. After all, if the viewer wasn’t impacted all that much by the content, they’re probably not going to share it—and will likely forget all about it soon enough.
Of course, when creating emotionally-driven content for your audience, you have a range of emotions to choose from.
According to a report from Marketing Science Institute, this choice is a bit more complex than it first seems:
“…positive content is more viral than negative content… (but) while more awe-inspiring and more surprising content are more likely to make the most emailed list, and sadness-inducing content is less viral, some negative emotions are positively associated with virality. More anxiety- and anger-inducing content are both more likely to make the most emailed list. In fact, the most powerful predictor of virality in their model is how much anger an article evokes.”
(As a quick note, we should mention that having your content go viral for anger-inducing reasons, though technically effective, isn’t likely to lead to good things for your brand.)
To reiterate:
Awe-inspiring content is more likely than any other to go viral.
Now, don’t let the phrase “awe-inspiring content” scare you. You don’t have to leave your audience speechless or anything like that; you just have to get their attention long enough to become emotionally invested in your content (which, as we’ll get to, prompts them to share it with their friends and family).
Naturally, if you have an idea that you know will leave your audience speechless, go for it—just as non-profit organization WATERisLIFE did with the following campaign that generated over 7 million views on YouTube:
But, again, you don’t necessarily need to “go deep” in terms of evoking emotion. “Awe-inspiring” might just mean “surprising,” or even “shocking,” depending on your audience.
Take, for example, Dollar Shave Club’s “Our Blades Are F***ing Great” campaign:
It’s a bit irreverent—and that’s the point. Back in 2011-12 when Dollar Shave Club was just getting off the ground, this campaign made some bold claims while making its audience laugh—and generated some major brand awareness in the process.
Alternatively, you can aim to promote a positive, more deep-seated message while also being what we’ll call “aww-inspiring,” as Mattel did with this Barbie commercial that has been viewed close to 26 million times:
Here, Mattel addresses a topic as earnest as women’s equality while simultaneously promoting imagination through play. GoldieBlox took a similar approach, smashing gender norms in an engaging and playful manner:
It all depends on your brand’s persona, your relationship with your customers, and the emotions they experience when engaging with your brand. Trigger the right emotions from your audience at the right time, and they’ll be jumping at the chance to share the experience with others in their network—leading to massive virality for your brand.
Viral Content is Shareable and Universal
Even if your content is authentic, and even if it evokes powerful emotions within your audience, it’s not going to go viral unless there exists a shareable and universal element to it.
Shareability means the difference between your audience saying “Aw, that was cute,” or “Hah, that was pretty funny,” and them saying “Oh my GOD. I have to show (name of friend/family member/coworker) this right now!”
More than making your audience laugh, think, or even get misty-eyed at their cubicle during lunchtime, your content needs to connect with them and motivate them to connect with others. This can be done by tapping into your audience’s personalities, interests, emotions, desires, dreams, and even frustrations—and addressing them in a positive manner.
In some cases, the focus is on pulling together a relatively niche audience (or group of audiences). For example, during last year’s Super Bowl, Bud Light and HBO collaborated to create an ad featuring Bud Light’s “Dilly Dilly” characters and the dragons from Game of Thrones:
Here, we had two brands bringing sports fans and GOT enthusiasts together over a mutual love of beer. This meant two separate audiences—which don’t generally overlap, per se—sharing a single piece of content, leading to virality for both companies.
But the content that typically proves to be most shareable is that which is nearly universal to any audience, regardless of specific interests and other factors.
Take, for example, this commercial from Hafod Hardware that went viral over the recent holiday season:
Anyone who’s experienced the magic of Christmastime as a child can appreciate the message of this ad. In fact, you don’t even necessarily need to care about the brand to get the full impact of the content. To be sure, it’s this universality—coupled, of course, with perfect timing—that caused this campaign to go viral last December.
Having said all this, we don’t want to leave you with the idea that branding isn’t vital to the success of your viral campaigns. After all, if no one notices that your brand is behind a piece of content, it doesn’t matter if it goes viral, right?
Overall, creating viral content is about finding a common thread between all potential audiences—whether they belong to your core target audiences or not—then tying this common thread back to your brand in some way.
The goal is for everyone who views your content to get something out of it—that is, enough to make them want to share it.
Of course, the more this happens, the larger your potential audience becomes. While not everyone who engages with your viral content will end up becoming paying customers, they’ll at least continue sharing it until it reaches someone that will.
So You’ve Gone Viral… Now What?
You’ve created authentic, emotionally-driven content appreciated on an almost universal level. Your content and your company’s good name have been shared by fans of your brand and passersby alike, spreading like wildfire throughout the online realm.
Instead of sitting back and resting on your laurels, now’s the time to take action—in two ways.
First, you need to capitalize on your enhanced visibility (otherwise, there was no point in going viral in the first place). Remember, since your content will have attracted prospects both within and outside of your core audience, you’ll want to figure out different ways to provide value to individuals of many walks of life. This may even uncover an entirely new audience for you to target moving forward!
Secondly, think about why your content was able to go as viral as it did—and use what you learn to influence your future content creation efforts. In reverse-engineering the success of your viral marketing campaigns, you’ll increase the chances of your next campaign spreading just as far and wide.
It’s simple:
If you know what it takes to create viral content, and you know what to do once it happens, you’ll have put your company on the path to massive, continuous growth.