Why Content Goes Viral: What Analyzing 100 Million Articles Taught Us.

by AussieCoz

Posted: 8 years ago 3 replies

INTERNET MARKETING

I'm new to Warrior Forum and noticed some people share some of their favourite blogs and articles and thought I would share one I read recently which I thought was great about why content goes viral.

I recently read an article by Okdork.com’s Noah Kagan. Noah is a smart dude, his tongue in cheek blog is all about marketing, startups, self-expiration and life as an Internet entrepreneur.

With degrees in Business and Economics which have seen him work at global giants Intel, Microsoft and Facebook before becoming the Director of Marketing at digital agency Mint, Noah is well known in the digital marketing industry and founded KickFlip and AppSumo.

I’m an avid follower of Noah's blog. One of his blog’s that has resonated is a question that pops up here on the forum quite a bit, ‘Why Content Goes Viral: What Analysing 100 Millions Articles Taught Us”. See link to article here http://okdork.com/2014/04/21/why-con...les-taught-us/

In the blog, Noah writes about his analysis of the BuzzSumo website and the what he found to be the common elements of viral content.

The BuzzSumo team focused on a range of questions to find out why content went global including:

What type of emotions did the article invoke?
What type of posts got the most shares?
What length were the blogs?
Did trust play a part in whether the article was shared?
Did the post have images?
How many people shared the post in the days after the article was published?
What day of the week is the best day to publish?

Top points from the blog are outlined below:

Long form content gets more social shares than short form - while we’re always taught less is more, the opposite is true in this case. The longer the content the more it gets shared. 3000 to 10000 word articles get more shares that short form of less than 1000 words.

Having more than one image in your post will contribute to Facebook shares - this means that to post to social media sites you should always include a visual element to optimise its opportunity to go viral. Furthermore, articles that included the Facebook preview image meta tag usually get three times the shares than those that don’t have this. The same is true for Twitter, add an image and it will prosper on Twitter.

Appeal to the reader’s emotions - when 10,000 articles were shared, emotions were a key factor in engagement including awe, laughter, amusement, joy plus many more. Sharing valuable content to friends shows we have good taste and spur conversation, and this may be one of the key reasons for this trend. Quizzes were a popular shared item, this may be due to the fact that this fuels our identity and ego.

Sharing lists and infographics a super popular - this is one of the key areas where people like to share. Infographics and lists stand out from the crowd as far as popular posts and are far and away more likely to be shared onto social networks. The reason behind this may be that the reader prefers to be able to skim an article and quickly gather the info, or the visual elements make the information easier to digest.

Lists work best in lots of 10 - this seems to be the magic number for these types of articles, and the most shared lists include lots of ten tips.

People will share content that looks trustworthy - this plays a major role in whether people will share content. If the writer has a byline or bio, the article is more likely to be shared on Twitter, LinkedIn and Google +.

There are plenty more findings or why content goes viral in this article and it is well worth a read.

A link to the article can be viewed here Why Content Goes Viral: What Analyzing 100 Million Articles Taught Us. | OkDork.com

Have you found any other pearls of wisdom for why content goes viral?

#100 #analyzing #articles #content #million #taught #viral

dburk 8 years ago

Hi AussieCoz,

I do not agree with the first point, about long form being better for social sharing.

I don't argue that the data is incorrect, I believe the data is absolutely spot on, however it is the conclusion drawn from that data that is incorrect.

I would argue that it is the relative value of the content, not the length that matters. Their data analysis method simply measured the wrong thing.

When people are lazy, sloppy, or just incompetent, they tend write very few words (short form), and include content with very little value. There just happens to be a lot of content that has very little value that also uses the short form. That is a simple fact of the data.

Where the study failed to make a valid conclusion, in my opinion, is in their improper assumption that the quality of the content, on average, was equal for both the long and short forms.

If they where to put long and short form content into categories of relative equal utility value they would likely draw a completely different conclusion.

Implying incorrectly that correlation is equal to causation is the most common fallacy in data analysis, their conclusion on that point is a text book example of a failed study.

Data analysis done by a "clickbait" author is like giving a machine gun to an ape, it going to be wrong on so many levels, yet oddly entertaining.

Never trust a chimpanzee with an AK-47 and definitely never ever trust a clickbait author with data analysis.

Ape With AK-47 - YouTube
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- Jeff Burritt Banned 8 years ago
  
  I like your points.
  
  One distinction perhaps is that if you are running an authority site/blog (like Niel Patel), then long form probably does get more shares.
  
  If however, you're doing click bait and affiliate type site/blog, then I agree short form get more shares. People like simple easy even gimmicky stuff.
  
  In my personal experience, it seems that I tend to get just as much or more activity with short, even dumb, posts; than with longer developed posts.
  
  Yes there's a lot of factors, but probably the biggest is setting your visitor's expectations. If they expect your site to be a visually driven sharefest, then they don't want long posts, just something interesting, shocking, funny to find and share.
  
  If however, your visitors want a nice long well detailed post, then it's probably because they want to impress their friends (and hopefully look smart by sharing and associating with you.)
  
  My take.
  
  [QUOTE=dburk;10764225]Hi AussieCoz,
  
  I do not agree with the first point, about long form being better for social sharing.
  
  When people are lazy, sloppy, or just incompetent, they tend write very few words (short form), and include content with very little value. There just happens to be a lot of content that has very little value that also uses the short form. That is a simple fact of the data.
  
  Never trust a chimpanzee with an AK-47 and definitely never ever trust a clickbait author with data analysis.
  
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aizaku 8 years ago

read the article a while back, Noah Kagan is a beast by the way (him and Neil Patel)

yea, long form all the way
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