Sometimes you just want to “like” something on VKontakte or vice versa: leave an angry comment and send it to a friend, like, how dare they joke like that. If you have experienced something like this, then you have encountered viral content.
Virality and viral content
The phrase “viral content” could be replaced by the short word “meme”. Now almost everyone understands its meaning. Not only funny pictures can be viral, but also videos, texts, podcasts, basically any content and any information.
It is no coincidence that the words “viral” and “viral” are similar to each other, but they have different meanings. Virality is the degree of popularity, how easily the content itself is distributed among users without additional promotion. Viral content is content that has high virality. Calculating the latter is not always easy. But in general, it is determined by the number of likes, views and reposts of the post on the Internet – the more often people share, the better the viral advertising has spread, the higher the virality.
Examples
As mentioned above, any content can be viral. High virality can be achieved for text, video, and infographics.
Text
Every word in a highly viral text should be memorable and evoke emotions. It is either an interesting story, told vividly and in detail, or a funny joke on Twitter, or a large useful article. The latter of all texts, by the way, often become viral: users like to buy telemarketing data share voluminous interesting materials. Stories also often fill the walls of profiles on social networks – when the author humorously talks about some general topic close to the target audience.
The hardest thing is to make a viral text on Twitter, where you only have 140 characters to work with. The leading bloggers on this social network cope with this, so by collaborating with them, you can create content that meets the expectations of Twitter readers. One tweet usually fits either a call to action or a joke. It is convenient to use such techniques as a dialogue or a set of several short theses. You can make several tweets on one topic, reinforcing interest in a product or brand. This technique is used by the English-language Twitter of Burger King, advertising the new Mac n’ Cheetos.
Video
The overwhelming majority of viral advertising youtube channels about business and any viral content is video. This format is convenient for making blogs, reviews and short sketches. Some companies spend huge budgets on videos. Like Samsung, for example, which rented all the panels in Times Square to advertise a new phone. marketing list Others make a cheap but funny video demonstrating the product, which is distributed on blogs and social networks: a buyer steals the thinnest LG TV from a store.
If you go the other way and fill the video with useful material, GIFs are a great choice. These small, silent videos can demonstrate the operation of an internal combustion engine, depict the settlement of the planet, and show many other things, while quickly spreading across the Internet.
Making a highly viral video is usually easier than making text: the same is true for any advertising.
Pictures and infographics
Images can accompany text or act as viral content on their own. The latter is the way Burger King goes with its scandalous ad, which then ends up in publics and saved photos of users. Pictures with high contrast and a combination of bright colors will attract more attention. It is often better to make the caption not as text, but on the image itself.
Infographics don’t necessarily have to go with the article either. Beautifully designed, they can convey both serious and interesting information, as well as quite humorous information. Great success can be achieved by using popular, “meme” templates. Like, for example, the extremely popular “How long can a person stay awake?”, which gave rise to a number of similar posts.
Tests, games
But the virality of such content is explained, among other things, by a recently emerged fashion. Some users perceive tests and games in the browser and applications with surprise, as once upon a time gifs, which served as the main method of advertising on the Internet.
5 Rules for Creating Viral Content
It is not always possible to hit the target. Hitting the trend. It is important to understand what the target audience is currently interested in, what they laugh at, and what they consider shameful to laugh at, what makes them angry. Trends change quite quickly, but if you catch the wave, you can get very high virality.