Success tips for viral content marketing

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Let's assume you know the basics: content marketing is one of the best ways to engage with viewers and potential customers online. It is used to improve search rankings, increase brand participation and loyalty, increase brand visibility, and encourage social sharing and interaction. If you are a consumer-facing company in this era, you simply cannot keep up with the competition if you are not actively building content marketing skills.

It's easier said than done, isn't it? You may have been involved in content marketing before, or even hired a "top agency." "Maybe you've even seen some results; several links, there are hundreds of shares, but then what? Of course, no fireworks, no mass rankings improved, no lead or sales increase. Maybe you want it to be a panacea. Short time and money, you may give up the reinvestment money put into trying and real marketing tactics, at least can drive number conversion. You use chalk to write something too expensive or hard to find any real success in content marketing.

If this resonates with you, you will never be alone. Doing content marketing correctly is not an easy task, and beginners seem to be unlikely to create anything that will stand out and get noticed. Added to the explosion, claiming to be the master, and delivering the pathetic results of the entire "content marketing" arena, began to feel like a puzzling mess, unable to deliver on its promised institutions.

So, how do you do that? Other tactics lose effectiveness, your site is lost rankings, you can't get social participation in your life, your frustration level is at a historical high.

　　

You go back to the beginning, and you re learning content, showing what content marketing can really do for your business what it takes to get the work done: the truth. Content Marketing can change a company overnight.

　　

When content goes viral: The above example shows nearly 10 times times the growth of a single successful virus activity in the customer's organic search traffic (single from Google). The big spike that began in December marked the launch of the campaign.

Step 1: Understand the truth about your competition

You can assume that when you first start, your only competition is to be an enterprise competitor to an online company that strives for the same search phrase or sells the same product or service. When it comes to content marketing, these businesses are just the beginning. What you have to remember is that when creating content, your battles are all about the creator of all content, not just the enterprise. Your content must be on a firm footing for those who are creating content for purely non-commercial reasons. This means that with your campaign you must not only do better than your competitors, but you have to do more than almost everyone is talking about your subject area.

Step 2: The engagement is good, but the virus is better

In content marketing, a continuous incremental route can be an effective way to go. Can build a loyal audience, create a lot of content related, useful, but not special virus. Through persistence and content is often hard to create progress, it is possible to find a positive long-term ROI. If you have the ability to extract content 5-7 weeks a week and moderately useful pieces, eventually you may see good results. However, as Randfish says, you must "not be reconciled to failure for a long time." ”

　　

In fact, for companies to be able to afford it, this is an important content marketing piece of pie, and often it is worth recommending to our customers who have longer time frames. But this style of content marketing your business will not change in the short term. It may take years of concerted effort to dramatically increase rankings and audience growth.

If you don't have years of no time, energy or budget to create compelling content on a regular basis, or just need to quickly build audiences what? The answer is this: you have to create some viral content that can be transmitted in a way that creates great concern. Content will push the top to wiggle the masses and let others notice.

Below, you can see the results of our marketing campaign for viral content, which affects the increase of our customer's organic flow by 271%. It is important to note that these results produce a single promotional link in the buzzfeed.com placement, nofollow.

　　

Step 3rd: Understand what this means "virus"

If you do any reading on viral marketing, you may encounter the formula to describe the viral spread attempt, but none of them makes it very specific to the understanding that the means of going viral have a higher level of visibility. The fact is that viral transmission and the behavior of viruses are not really that complicated. Some "viruses" depend on three important variables with a specific value. These variables include:

Viral coefficient: The total number of new audiences generated by an existing browser. As content creator, that's what you should be most concerned about is that it's basically a "score" on how to share your content indeed.

Virus cycle Time: The amount of time spent before all these new users have been generated by a single initial audience. In content marketing, the cycle time of a virus can be considered a lot of time and will take a piece of content to share with them to view the content before deciding whether to share their audience who. The cycle time of a virus that shares content is usually no more than 1-2 days, although in some special cases it can be longer. For the purposes of our discussion here, we will define the cycle time for the virus to be one day.

Total Effective Market: Online numbers may be interested in sharing your content. Wide appeal type, this number may be in hundreds of millions of. For niche content, this could be as low as hundreds of or thousands of people.

I have adapted a spreadsheet to look at how these factors affect the anatomy and ultimate success or failure of a piece of content. The bones of this spreadsheet were originally created by Mark Devisser. Make a copy of this document at will, and play with the above three variables. As a note, you may notice some of the key aspects of viral transmission, including:

Could not create true viral transmission, along with the gossip of the "hockey rod" figure no virus coefficient is greater than "1". The higher the coefficient, the faster the spread of the content and the faster and more sudden the hockey stick you will see on the graph.

The initial size of the seed is important for the length of time that occurs when the network effect (hockey stick) required from the initial release. The initial seed is larger, sooner or later you will see a potential virus effect, assuming the coefficient is still greater than 1.

Extended cycle time will extend to see the effect of a virus (hockey stick) Fortunately, web-based content of the length of time, cycle time is very rapid due to social channels and the nature of digital content. If the measurement says the snail mail chain letter virus spreads, the cycle time will be the week order, creates the viral transmission, will need longer time to assume the virus coefficient is greater than 1.

The total effective market size has a huge bearing on the total number of views accumulated. This makes it very important to think about the development process of your target audience's ideas. If you want to have a virus to crush, you must have content to attract the masses (discussed later).

Step 4th: Create content with a virus factor greater than 1

So, understand what is great about viral transmission, viral spread and understanding leverage, or even better, but how specific content translates? How do you get to know our thoughts just now and let them work for you in content marketing efforts?

　　

To start, first of all, the most important, most difficult step is to create a piece of content that you think will probably have a virus factor greater than 1. When it finally comes down to it, there is no perfect way to measure whether there is a specific content, there will be a virus coefficient greater than 1. Eventually, you won't know until your content to the Internet. However, by exploring the top quality, which exists in most viral content with the above 1 coefficients, it can give itself a much higher probability of success of a virus.

Strong emotional driver

Simply put, emotions drive almost all behavior. When an emotion is triggered in your brain, your nervous system responds by creating a subjective experience (feelings). A great deal is told about your decision to do what kind of feelings because it is your emotional response: Evaluate and summarize lessons and inform your actions. The stronger the feeling, the more likely it is to stimulate response action.

When it comes to online sharing, the potential for emotional activation is easier. Essentially, when approaching a new content, typical content consumption has four options.

Engaged in or detached from

Shared or not shared

In order to share content consumption, they have to share these content from prior content before making a decision. Mediated, these behaviors are entirely by emotion. Many brain researchers and scientists agree that the interest of the emotion is constantly appearing in the normal state of mind, and normally, it is central to the positive, creative and constructive effort and the sense of participation of the well-being. Interest and it with other emotions occupy selective attention, which in turn affects all other mental processes. Therefore, in order to find someone to engage with your content, it must first be a pique of interest. It is for this reason that the headlines are so much important. There is no title, which arouses interest outside of an undefined threshold, and there will be no participation.

Suppose you have aroused the reader's interest, an interesting title, and have passed the first stage, your content must now be persuaded to share with the reader. This decision-making process is defined by the renowned psychologist Richard Lazares as follows:

Cognitive Assessment: Individual assessment of event cognition, emotional cues.

Physiological changes: Cognitive reactions begin to increase heart rate or-pituitary-adrenal responses, such as biological changes.

Action: The individual feels the emotion and chooses how to react (or not).

If the cognitive evaluation spurs a strong enough emotion, the result, the large physiological changes, the likelihood of action increases. The cognitive assessment leads to the shared content of the case if strong enough emotions and the resulting physiological response, overcoming factors antagonistic to the sharing of the reader will share the content.

So how do we create a strong emotional driver in our content?

In a fast-paced online environment, you will always have a short time to get the attention of the audience. Your goal should be to capture the audience's attention and then their emotions get done as quickly as possible. Faster, deeper, you can engage in your own emotions, the more likely it is the audience to invest enough in their content to share. Let's address speed by:

The speed of emotional activation

If you are not able to quickly convey your content to emotionally influential aspects, you may die in the water. High viral levels will convey a strong emotional impact on the first few seconds of viewing. This is because of the fact that visual, easy to understand, easy to consume content is usually the most viral. One eye virus kingmakers like reddit.com, you will find that 90% of the front page content is a static image. This is also the reason behind the successful information graph (as well as image macros/memes, GIF animations and some other media). Visualizing, simplifying, and easy to consume, information graphs can make excellent viral content, but only when they are in the interest of them, illegal strong emotional reactions, and can be prolonged.

What emotions should we engage in?

It can be imagined that almost all emotion, as it is strong enough, can act as a shared host drive. But in practice, not all emotions are effective in driving others to share their behavior. Unfortunately, there have been very few studies of shared types of emotion. Jonah Berg, a professor at the Wharton School, has done some preliminary research in this area to find the email sharing rate of the New York Times "article." His findings are summarized as follows:

The results show that positive content is more viral than negative content, but only parity, emotional and social transport relationships are more complex. Viral part of the physiological Awakening Drive. High arousal (e.g. AWE) or the content of negative emotions (anger or anxiety) evokes more viruses. Content, evoke arousal, or deactivate, emotions (such as sadness) are less viral. These results remain even when controlling how strange, interesting, or practical content (all of which are positive links to viral transmission), as well as attention to external drives (e.g., how to highlight the content is featured). Experimental results further demonstrate the causal transmission of specific emotional effects and indicate that it is induced by activation of the level. Together, these findings reveal why people share content and how to design more effective viral marketing campaigns. “

Although in the understanding of emotional driver sharing, this is a great start, it is a very incomplete understanding. In further detail the true emotional drive effort, I try to understand the emotional impact of content that better meets the standard of most viral content (ie, visual, Easy-to-understand, and easy to consume content).

The exclusive FRACTL research project: Viral sentiment

* It is important to point out here that the following experiments are unscientific or broadly comprehensive to begin with. Despite this, it is a good deal to talk about some of the most obvious emotional drivers of viral content, and the takeaway can be very valuable. More in-depth research may assume additional information and finer insights. * (raw data)

I started by selecting a set of "Best in the best" viral content that I believed was representative of what I believe. To make sure I am Apple, Apple compares, I decided to use only static images, not written or multimedia content. Memes and internal jokes are also excluded factors, which cause them to become viruses can be non emotional and more difficult to analyze or determine.

I used the content source from the top 50 image positions for all time reddit.com/r/pictures, community 3.4 million plus content voter. I chose 25 pictures, I think can be independent, those who need not previously knowledge, understand (bookmark transactions tend to improve the internal joke type of content at the occasion, so the intersection of the fitting contour is excluded).

Then I coded each image by 50 volunteers in the mood, causing each image to be the strength of every emotion. Possible options for emotions include:

Possible emotional choices

　　

　　

　　

　　

　　

What have we learned?

The results of this informal survey are actually quite alarming for some of the most viral visual content on the Web. We only found out that most of the findings reflected the results of Jonah Berger, but we also found some interesting additional takeaway. Our findings are as follows:

Positive emotions are more prevalent than negative emotions (14 negative and 184 positive).

Some specific emotions are very common, while others are extremely rare.

　　

The intensity of emotional impact is a great indicator of the popularity of content on Reddit. The four most popular posts also have the top four total emotional scores in the Reddit (the sum of the total emotional power score).

　　

Interest, surprise and entertainment seem to show positive emotions and sympathy for the emotional multiplier that seems to be a negative emotion as an emotional multiplier. 12 25 images, entertainment, interest, and surprise as the top of the mood 3, all images of the mood (whether entertainment, interest, or surprise) at least 1.

Contrast emotions seem to help increase the emotional impact. In the case of negative emotions, at present, their positive emotions seem to be directly contrasted, and the images through this contrast may improve mood. In addition, the transposition of thinking, seems to be the popular content, evoking strong negative emotions next to discovering a common emotion.

Increased emotional viral transmission

Obviously, emotional content is essential in creating a wide range of far-reaching viral content, and even some emotions seem to work better than others in working towards this goal, but are there other ways to expand the viral spread of emotion? In other words, how can emotions be improved?

Increased content Emotional identity

Let your visual content

Visual content is a whole, better communicated emotion and quick and easy to understand. As a result, images and videos have a leg on the written form of the content. It is for this reason that image and video sharing dominates online. The reason for it is the image and video of the main Reddit on the front page of each day, with 40 of the top 50 positions on Reddit all the time either an image or video reason. The reason for this is that we all see information graphs, GIF animations and image macros have become ubiquitous. As a general rule, it is only a more appealing visual content.

　　

Let your content interact

In a more positive way than simple static content, interactive content with the audience's senses and attention. By creating an experience that your audience must participate in, you will certainly improve the impact. If your interactive activity is an emotional angle, it can dramatically increase the emotional impact. What we have seen this recent occurrence in a very good way is through the use of these parallax therapies.

Make your personalized content

Customizing or personalizing content, its essence, is better engaged in audience sentiment than non personalized content. It is easier to induce emotions when users can see their content instead of relying on transposition thinking to put themselves in someone else's shoes. Some excellent emotions are compelling, personalized, and content is like this, explaining the emotional drive, personalization, and visualization of what can be incredibly viral. Have you ever created 120,000 + Facebook's favorite things? Try emotionally driven, visual, personalized, interactive content that you might just be able to.

Emotional stacking List

If you haven't been attached to buzzfeed.com lately, you should start. They have mastered what I like to call "emotional stacking art." ”

Definition: Lists different visual content, topic links, to a list of structures that intentionally create a specific emotional response.

　　

For example, an example shows that the technology is perfect. 45 "" 2011 Most powerful image list after image. Each image is added to the user's emotional response, and by the end of the year, you, you have been working into such an emotional state that the desire to share almost feels visceral.

Growing viral factor-beyond emotion

Although emotions generally play the greatest role in determining the coefficient of a virus in a piece of content, there are other aspects that can be marked or not, and ultimately shared content. Additional motivational factors can play a key role, especially in conveying a social or self-interest factor.

Social benefit Sharing:

Share Social incentives/rewards

"Inside and Out"

Content that makes the audience feel exclusive, or knows, or contains the motivation to often work well and share. This circle of home vs. Group Effects is one of the driving forces of memes ' popularity, by sharing "internal jokes" shared by people who show that they are part of the inner group.

　　

Altruism”

Allowing the sharer to think that the real good content they are doing can often motivate the sharing and viral coefficients to increase significantly. This is particularly true of the content, with a strong emotional link that builds strong emotional empathy. This is just a good example of an altruistic enhancement, an emotional-driven viral effect.

　　

"Self-identity/image accomplice."

When it comes to sharing content with people like Facebook community users, they often make shared decisions about how content will represent their peers. What is it, sharing, that specific content will convey to their peers? Shared content, will be sure the identity of the sharer will be more likely to be than shared content, not. This is a kind of emotion-driven content, which involves social hot issues often because of the extreme virus.

　　

We see this widely used (word in the best sense) Oreo such companies, their pro-LGBT rights movement over the past year. Share incentives because so many people feel the need to position themselves on the problem or on the other side, consolidating their identities for themselves and their peers emotionally moving images as vehicles.

Step 5th: Reduce the cycle time of the virus

As I mentioned earlier, the amount of time that is considered to be a virus during the cycle time for the audience to share when they view the content. The viral coefficient is greater than 1, which requires exponential growth of the virus, which increases the timeline fast, or it can be slow. It is the viral cycle time that determines how rapidly exponential growth will occur in the content with more than 1 of the virus coefficients. This is the content creator, doing everything they can to reduce the virus's cycle time to help realize the virus in the shortest possible time to grow exponentially in the best interest. So what can be done to manipulate the virus cycle time? To be exact, quite a lot of things can stimulate the consumption of content faster and share content shares more quickly. This includes, but is not limited to, the following:

1. Reduce time consuming

The content of conciseness is very important. Faster content can make an impact faster on the potential cycle time. This is another image that is often the cause of the virus. They can be understood with lightning-like speed and sharing. For example, a virus image may only take a few seconds to consume, while a long article, or long video may take several minutes or longer to consume. The slower the consumption of the content, the slower the cycle time of the virus, the longer the latent time will be taken to take the contents of the virus (assuming it has a factor of more than 1 of the virus). The takeaway here is to do what you can to make your content as concise as possible, as long as you don't sacrifice the impact of the content. Sacrifice 1 + factor virus, faster cycle time, don't make such a mistake, cause without it, you won't have any viral spread.

2. Improve ease of use and speed sharing

Sharing your content simply and quickly is absolutely necessary to help increase the cycle time of the virus. You should do what you can, including the most popular social-networking sites (facebook,qq space-sharing, Pinterest, email, and Reddit) minimal sharing tools. You should also make sure that sharing settings correctly share a compelling default title and text.

Step 6: The limitations of viral communication and the importance of the audience.

I've talked about the importance of general emotional activation virus content, but it's often possible to create a little bit more nuanced about the viral content of the virus rather than simply creating something that will make the audience's emotions strong. It is also very important to do your best to ensure that your content is well suited to your desired target audience.

Now, if you just want to create a lot of viruses, you really don't care about any connection or tie, in your company or brand, your topic of thought opportunities is almost limitless. However, in practice, this is not often the case. The common goal is to create a virus content in some way to contact the publishing company to create content. In this case, it must be carefully defined by the target audience for potential content, even in coming up with ideas. Is that the content you create in this subdivision of the target audience will determine whether your content will become a virus.

Considering that you may want more, future blog posts will relate to this topic more deeply, but in general, any concept of viruses to identify potential receptions, it is important to consider the following aspects of your audience you are considering creating.

What type of content do your target audiences like to consume?

What specific topics often have to be discussed within the community, specifically, what kind of topic does this society matter?

What kind of topic is controversial? Get this society what's infuriating?

General Zeitgeist community, what are your goals? What are their views on the social and political issues that they generally hold?

Who are their heroes and villains?

Who is his famous celebrity?

What is its unique history, their legends and fables?

What kind of emotion is usually expressed to your target audience?

Not understanding your audience can spell failure. If you can't understand them enough to know how to push their emotional buttons, and what pushes you will have to put them from the possibility of sharing high.

7th step: Notice of fractal viral transmission

Fractals are mathematical systems that are used for a long time in the repetitive patterns of self-similarity of different scales. In the context of viral marketing, it can be thought of as the so-called "viral expansion cycle" when the content is created to provide a user or audience to extend or create a new viral content based on or to build it into a proper descriptor as part of the original content. Generally, the content is generated by the user, either positively (the user actually does something) or passive (using the user's data but they do nothing). Some examples of the form content include:

Elfyourself.com

Download the Obesity Age (Fatbooth), Oldbooth, and other mobile apps

The UGC's photo or video contest, such as: crashthesuperbowl.com

Altruistic DIY concepts such as Savage's "Get Better" campaign

By providing users with an opportunity to harness their creativity through personalization and user generated content, it is possible to create fractal sharing and mass exposure. Keep in mind that all emotional drivers with viral content discussions apply here, and we simply add an extra layer or step to spread the virus. Some important aspects to consider when trying to establish a fractal content include:

How can you adapt to this idea, personalize it, or change it while retaining the main message?

How do you enable creativity? Function that is conducive to creativity and innovation to ease?

How do you encourage users to create compelling emotional content?

How do you plan or control the content? Is there a potential negative response?

Conclusion

Viruses and fractal content are likely to reach a large audience and impact, but in practice it is extremely difficult to create. By understanding your audience and motivating their emotional drivers, it can greatly increase your chances of success. The elements of viral transmission through careful detection, in the future will likely continue to significantly increase the chances of success. Here in Fractl, our goal is to be able to do this. Keep an eye out for some new case studies that will help illustrate the emotional-driven viral and fractal content through real-life examples that have been done here. This article is edited by http://www.ec-cable.com, reprint please specify!

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