How viral marketing works? and how to get viral?

I had three articles go viral on a previous blog I started, which is what really got my internet business started. I had no idea beforehand that these articles were going to go viral, but looking back there are a few insights I can extract with an emphasis on content marketing:

1. Making a product or service go "viral" is easier with content marketing, because you have more chances to fail with your content and when your content is picked up, as a by product, your product or service gets attention.

2. Including lists or links to other people in the industry or community is a good way to get those individuals to share your articles and increases the chance your article will be picked up by other blogs.

3. Provide an incentive for people to share or comment. Always ask yourself when you hit publish or ship - why would people want to share this? Buzzfeed does a great job of this, in the same way that chain mail did. Paypal had it built into their product.

4. Writing on a topic that hasn't been covered yet is a great way to get to the top of google. When larger blogs and publications are researching that topic, they are more likely to link to your company's blog or website because your article is first for those keywords. This is how I got links from Hypebot, Shopify, and Mint.

5. Keep putting out content and products. It seems like a no-brainer, but it increases the chances that something you're doing will resonate and be shared.

To get something to go viral:

1. You need something of REAL value that people will find so useful/helpful/cool, they actually want to share it with their friends.

2. A built-in and EASY method of self-replication.

That's it!

Will

Here's a simple strategy i use to spread my content virally.

1. Make a top ten list style blog post related to your niche. For example, let's say i had a website in the golf niche offering golf advice. My blog post would be something like "Top Ten Golf Instructors" In the blog post make sure to link to the sites of the golf instructors.

2. Before you make your Top Ten list make sure whatever you feature has a strong social media following.

3. Now once you have your blog post published. Go tweet the golf instructors you featured and ask them to tweet you link. If they have a significant following you can expect alot of traffic. Especially, if you get all ten to tweet you link.

This works because people like to be recognized. It is good publicity for the instructors.
Anyways you can apply this strategy to any market. Basically, find something or a list of things you can feature in a blog post. Then have the sites or people you featured tweet or share your post to their social network.

There has been many academic studies on going viral and they found some interesting things. Going viral is about having good content and something worth sharing naturally, but there is one other element.

Let me explain it with the case of visual.ly (I know staff there personally so got this story direct). They launched and within the first week they got over 10 million hits.

Impressive right? Well yes, but it wasn't actually their launch. It was their 3rd launch. The first two flopped.

The first made them take down the site completely. The second make them completely rethink their strategy so they launched the third time with almost the exact same product.

What they did, was look at research about what makes something viral. That something is actually multiple somethings. In 50 somethings.

You need over 50 influencers to promote your content for it to stand a chance of going viral.

That mean making a video and simply posting to Youtube will not make it viral, no matter how great the content, unless you get lucky and 50 influencers find it and promote it within a short space of time.

Quite often, you have to plan those influencers. That is why big companies pay for promotions and schedule reviews in magazines/influencing websites to all happen within the space of a few days.

Each 'influence' adds to the effect and yet allows enough time for a slight viral effect to take hold. The reviews/influencers then help add momentum to your content's viral coefficient.

This is what good product creators do (some of which you will find in the WSO section). They create an army of affiliates. They give them the right material and help them plan the launch, that will be announced within a short space of time. Each message might reach a slightly different audience but some will cross over, helping people to remember you and recommend you... creating a viral effect.

The magic number here is 50 influencers....