Creating content is only half of the battle. Our content is only as powerful as our relevancy, this means that we need to keep our content relevant and keep it from going stale. This can be done in a number of ways, most notably going viral. In class this week we heard form Jodie Dublin-Dangleben who talked to us about her experiences with going viral as well as keeping content fresh.
Jodie uses her wild and free-spirited personality to keep content original and different for her following. Jodie mentioned the use of hashtags and current trends to ensure that content was pushed to the top of users feeds as well as easy to find when searching for certain hashtags on social media.
This ties directly into our discussions in class about what makes content go viral. With viral content there are a few parameters that content should meet in order to be successful. Some of these parameters include evoking emotion, practicality, simplicity, credibility, and visually appealing. Regardless of what type of work you do, going viral should be a goal when you are creating content. Going viral means that your content will be seen by a much larger audience regardless of how many followers you have. This can promote your products to a whole new audience that you haven’t had before.
Going viral isn’t something that I personally have experienced but I can certainly relate to wanting my content out to a larger audience. For the reading this week I read Harvard Business Review’s article on emotions within marketing campaigns. The data presented in this article shows that the biggest hot spots for going viral are using anticipation and surprise. This makes sense as many of the viral videos, posts, and clips seen on social media are within these parameters. This is important to know as a content creator as it essentially gives us the road map to creating viral content. We can look at old viral YouTube videos such as the Ultimate Dog Tease video from 2011.
This video has over 209 million views, it was a very simple video, but it took off since it was an element of surprise for the viewers. It really did look like the dog was talking, the content was also funny and made people smile. This type of viral content can amass a ton of shares and views as soon as it takes off online.