Social media is a powerful tool for spreading information to a wide audience. While it can come with some bad elements like negative comments and publicity, almost every business wants to make their content go viral.
Creating viral content is challenging. It's hard to identify what will and won’t go viral and audiences can often be unpredictable with what content they do and don’t consider engaging. Businesses can use a social media platform's analytics tools to understand content performance and audience engagement, giving content a better chance at going viral.
The right piece of viral content comes with many benefits including increased awareness, growing followers, and ultimately, more sales.
What is viral social media content?
Viral content isn't one-size-fits-all but usually refers to social media posts.
To go viral, you need to create content that speaks to a wide audience. This could mean that it evokes emotion, makes people think, or is funny and entertaining. What ultimately makes a post go viral, is its ability to push viewers to share it with others.
Things to consider when creating viral content
There’s no surefire way to create viral content, but there are things you can do to help maximize your potential. Let's explore these:
Stay up to date
Trends are always changing so it's important to stay in the know. Reactive marketing is big business on social media platforms, so stay informed about what your target audience is interested in.
Newsjacking, the act of creating content that piggybacks onto current events, relevant hashtags, and social media trends can increase your reach and grab your audience's attention. Following industry experts and subscribing to relevant newsletters will help you stay tuned into trending topics and identify trending hashtags.
Try new content formats
Finding out where your audience spends their time is half the battle. Different audiences and demographics respond to different types of content. For example, younger audiences might prefer short-form video content, while older demographics may prefer articles or infographics.
When it comes to viral content creation, you should focus on the larger audience as this is where most of your potential customers sit. For example, if your Instagram has a large following, but your Facebook content isn't shared widely, then focus on creating content for Instagram.
Explore emerging platforms
When creating social media content, never underestimate the power of emerging social media channels. It wasn't long ago that TikTok was disregarded as a platform used by teens and social media influencers. But as of 2024, it has over 1.5 billion monthly active users and this is set to grow to 2.2 billion by 2027.
Tiktok's parent company generated $31.66 billion in ad revenue making it fourth in the global ranking of major media companies in 2022. But despite this, only 26% of marketers are using TikTok.
Staking yourself as an early adopter of a social media platform can help you stand out from the crowd and position yourself as a leader in the market. While the overall audience might be smaller, these social media users are more engaged leading to better interactions between businesses and their customers.
Monitor and adjust your strategy as needed
Knowing what your audience wants can be a challenge, but social media analytics tools can provide valuable insights into what content performs well and how your audience engages with your brand.
Often there isn’t an easy answer to what social media users do and don’t react well to. So instead, marketers must rely on trial and error. The best place to start is to look at your current online content and assess what is and isn’t working well. Does your audience respond well to one platform better than other channels? Or is motivational content helping to maximize reach?
Identify any patterns and use this data to help plan your future content ideas. The key to any viral campaign is quality content, so pinpoint what posts create an emotional connection and implement this into your future campaigns.
Examples of viral content
Now we've covered the tips you need to help create a viral post, here are some viral content examples:
Memes
Memes have quickly become one of the fastest-growing types of social media posts. So much so that more and more businesses are beginning to explore ‘meme marketing’. It's a way to connect with a wider audience by being funny and therefore more relatable. Memes can help you connect with your audience and create a more unique bond. They're also quick and easy to make so you can create reaction posts to real-life events or pop culture moments at low cost.
Memes are relatable and easy to understand quickly, making them ideal to go viral. You can adapt them to fit any topic, making them great for any business or industry, including marketing and sales. They're entertaining and create emotional reactions and community engagement as more people share them across their network and other platforms.
Giveaways
More companies see the benefits a giveaway brings to their social media platforms. It's a great way to boost brand awareness and grow your audience by incentivizing sharing. When done right, companies can raise their engagement levels, grow followers, and expand their networks by incentivizing their audience to refer friends and follow their social media profiles.
Depending on the prize, this strategy can be a relatively cheap way to improve these metrics, making this strategy low risk and high reward. However, you need to create a giveaway that speaks to your audience. You want to offer something that your fans would enjoy and want to receive. Need inspiration? Here’s one of our LinkedIn giveaways.
Videos
Almost everyone has heard the term viral video they're often considered the holy grail of viral marketing. Just ensure you're not creating content that could go viral for the wrong reasons.
Viral videos are a great way to create quality content that captures your audience's attention. When creating viral moments, you should consider:
- strong narrative
- thought-provoking ideas
- trending visuals
- high-quality content
- entertaining or comedic message
When done right, viral moments can reach a huge audience, but prepare for potential setbacks like negative feedback.
Listicles
Your audience are busy people. They want content that grabs their attention, whether that's a catchy headline or a new internet trend. Listicles are a great way to convey many deas in an easy-to-consume manner, and unlike a social media post, they can be optimized to appear in Google search results creating more organic traffic and driving clicks.
Listicles can cover any topic, making them extremely versatile. You can use listicles to inform, advise, persuade, or entertain making them great for any topic.
Looking for inspiration? Check out some of our listicles below:
- 15+ Sales influencers to follow in 2024
- 35+ best sales books of all time
- The ultimate 2024 corporate gift ideas guide
- 35+ funny and motivational sales quotes to help you get through the week
Quizzes and polls
Quizzes and polls are interactive, engaging, easy to tailor, and most importantly, fun! With so many quiz tools and platforms available like Typeform and SurveyMonkey it's easy to create one that suits your target audience and they can easily be shared via social media or email.
Start by brainstorming some potential topics that will resonate with your audience. Consider what issues they care about that will create the most engagement, like these.
A good example is a 'this or that' poll. Here you can ask your audience to choose between two interesting topics that people have strong opinions about. This can help generate a lively debate which may further the post's engagement and reach.
Influencer collaborations
Influencers are big business on social media. Brands are constantly looking for the perfect person to share their message and a good way to do this is by collaborating with high profile influencers with a large audience. Not only does this improve their organic reach but it can add an element of authenticity.
Unlike user-generated content, influencer marketing usually revolves around sponsored content so there is an element of cost to consider. The paid aspect can sometimes come off as disingenuous so you have to consider other ways to help build trust in the partnership. This could be through webinars or podcasts, where influencers discuss their affiliation or belief in your brand.
Wrapping up
It's hard to predict what will and won't go viral on social media platforms, which is why marketers spend so much time trying to understand their users.
Engaging content is a crucial part of any viral strategy and is essential to help social media users create an emotional connection.
Scheduling your posts is half the battle, with tools like Transpond you can manage your social media strategy easily in one space. But to do this you need data to help align your goals and better target your audience. With a CRM you can store all your customer information in one secure place making it easy to nurture your business relationships and improve your customer relations.
Discover how Capsule CRM can help you with a free 14-day trial.
