If you are reading this that means you have read the first part of this post and if you haven’t please do as this post is its continuation. Remember we are discussing about how you can develop a viral content and after listing a major technique, I decided to expatiate on them so let’s dig into it.
If we are familiar with social media then we know what a timeline is, so when I talk about Timelines in developing viral content it requires the right people to do the right thing at the right time for the content to connect to a lot of audience.
#thedress success was because those who encountered the original Tumblr photo actually shared it to the relevant channels, one of those channels being Buzzfeed where the story was covered resulting to over 12 million views. “We were surprised by the degree to which consumers played with the idea and made it their own” noted Lucie Austin, as the digital experience enabled people to send a virtual Coke to someone else via Facebook, Instagram, and other social media channels.
In Great Britain, it had over 998 million impressions, 235,000 tweets on Twitter with 17,000 virtual name bottles shared online across Europe in 2014. Here in Nigeria, the #Godwin trend gained so many genuine commentaries and awareness from a simple request and response from the right people, sharing video clips and posts on various social media channels was enough to cause the #Godwin effect to still sweetly plague us.
Lastly, the consistent application of well-developed campaign strategies is the final sauce for virality. It is essential to ensure that the awareness or content does not lose its wave too soon. This requires a need to tweak the content without compromising the originality or genuineness that previously captivated your audience. The most effective technique is advert placement, ensuring that the content is still in the timelines (eyes) of the audience.
As the ShareaCoke campaign gained popularity, they introduced a second release where they let customers vote for the next wave of names to be released, they introduced the campaign with opinion leaders and influencers who led the conversation and encouraged others to seek out “ShareaCoke” for themselves, then conducted various ShareaCoke activation tour and made use of billboards and TV ad like Bobby the dog.
Also, the #Godwin campaign went further in order to encourage their fans by releasing a pre #Godwin fan video clip. It is clear that in developing viral content luck would have a little role to play when this method is dutifully observed by every content developer or social media marketer. It is important to also note that this method is encompassing but is by no means exhaustive. The aim is to let authenticity, genuineness, and originality of the content precede every marketing intention and you will be striking viral gold soon.
Instead of spending so much money to ensure your campaign and ad remain on timelines or site banners (doctored marketing campaign), you should create content that can engage your audience, instigating them to share it on their timelines and across various channels. This content is known as self-generating virality and it’s better than a doctored marketing campaign.
Social media marketers and experts should notice that it often pays for your audience to unconsciously market your product content/concept themselves by sharing or connecting with it rather than paying for online ads. Rather, the latter should be mainly used to tweak and increase the availability of the content or campaign.
Finally, the aim of this article is not to discuss #Godwin or #ShareaCoke campaign but to focus on attributes and methods of achieving virality, they were only highlighted as examples where they applied such methods. I must say that, though, Shareacoke went so far I have yet to see my name on an actual Coke can, but #Godwin.