How to make content go viral?

Sooo, you want to hack Word of Mouth and be a Social Media wizard… Well, let’s go slowly here and start with the basics.

Basics about human psychology

(I’m aware that over-simplification can cause serious harm for me and my environment. Sorry about that. Well… no.)

We as humans have very special and diverse motivations, likes, interests and goals.

However we all share a few common triggers in our head which are not even controllable with logic most of the time. The reptile brain and it’s crazy reflexes. It triggers and urges us to act – even if our “big logical brain” thinks otherwhise. Check the Maslow’s Pyramid and the basic human needs for details.

Remember that tasty bag of chips, the three beers and the bar of chocolate the other night? That was your reptile brain in action. Also, not not approaching that hot guy/girl last week. Reptile brain. Trying to appeal to your friends, boss or wife. Reptile brain…

  • We all like to

 

Who will be sharing?

It does not matter if your content gets shared locally in a small group of friends or you hit the frontpage of Reddit or HackerNews…

Any ammount of visitors to your content is divided into two parts

  1. A big bunch of people who found the title interesting enough to click trough then leave or even enjoyed the content but only read/view and then leave (Consumers).
  2. A small group of people who actually care enough to share it further (Multiplicators, Sharers <- is that even a word?).

But people only share content when there is a benefit or added value for themselves trough the act of sharing. Also, you need to make sure that you provide enough value to people so that even the friend of a friend of a friend will share your content.

The Viral Content checklist

To be shared by many many people, who are also not directly within your audience the content needs to have as many of the following “added value for the sharing person” factors as possible. So when does one share your content?

  1. (The content needs to be around a topic they care about or have a relationship to. Really? Yes. Doh!)
  2. The content needs to be shared or be told to them by someone they like or admire. Their friend, familiy or a influencial person they trust.
    Their benefit is “I get to support someone I like” -> “They will like me back if I show support to them”
  3. The content needs to hold value for other people they know too. They want to be someone who shares valuable stuff so their own status in the peer group rises. Being useful feels great.
    Their benefit is “I can help a lot of people” -> “A lot of people (my peers) will find this useful and are thankful for me sharing this, so they recognize me, respect me more my status in my community will rise”.
    This can also be “sharing with someone who might be interested” -> “I know someone specific who might find this valuable and I can help THEM” -> “This person will respect me even more”
  4. If the designated sharer happens to have an own audience (i.e. Influencer, Blogger or Journalist) the content needs to be valuable and interesting for the readers / users of this particular influencer, blogger or journalist.
    Their benefit is “By sharing this content I get attention, interest, readers and more users for my own product – without having to create the content myself”
  5. The content needs to express a certain type of lifestyle, polarizing opinion, insider knowledge, insider joke.
    Their benefit is “I get to express who I am / who I belong to”, “I can present myself like someone who I want to be or which peer group I want to appeal to”, “I can asociate / surround myself with a certain type of people” -> The sharer can control his outside appearance and perceived image.

    1. This kind of content can be static (a static statement) like photos, books, art, poems, humor, jokes, memes, news, stories
    2. The content can also be dynamic (a dynamically generated personal statement for each individual sharer) like personality tests, photo or video processing, personal data, personal stories, …
  6. The shared content contains an actual tangible bonus or gain like money, free service, gift, any reward for the sharing person (and often for the receiving person too).
    Their benefit is “If I share it, I get an actual bonus which has some worth to me personally = I gain something which is otherwhise not available to me or expensive” + “Additionally I justify the weirdness of such a situation by also awarding the other person an equal bonus too”

Stacking the benefits

To increase the sharability of your content you should try to stack and add up a few of the above items. That way your contet will appeal as share-worthy to more and more people. Btw. is ayone playing bullshit-bingo and counting the awesomly-made-up buzzwords today? – I am going to win this! 😉

Stack it, baby!

Example

To give you a more hands-on example, lets make up a piece of content…

Imagine

 

 

This image from Ryan gives some explanation of how stacking those checklist items affects the sharing behaviour troughout the different levels of a social network.

Impact of stacking value addons into a sharable piece of content. (c) Ryan Pergent
Impact of stacking value addons into a sharable piece of content. (c) Ryan Pergent

If you want to read the source where I got the inspiration for this checklist go to Ryans Blog to check out some more details on “The share chain” from Ryan.