It should come as no great surprise that social media posts are a fantastic resource for anyone actively operating in the virtual world. Whether you’re a media-conscious blogger, marketing maven for a non-profit cause or a new or established e-tailer, having your content feed into multiple social media platforms is a vital element to increasing your visibility and grabbing the attention you want and need.
However, simply throwing any and all content and posts out into the digital abyss doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll see viral results. Indeed, it’s important to know what sorts of content stand the best chances of going global in the online sense.
Read on for some tips on leveraging the power of social media for widespread viral attention.
Make a Connection
You can’t put a price on tapping into a reader’s emotions. And when you do get through with a heartfelt post, the chances that the post will be passed along increase exponentially. So make sure your message touches one or more emotional chords, such as joy, anticipation, surprise etc.
Learn to Share
Build in a feature to your posts that gives users something free if they refer others to your site. This encourages people to share content, and increases the odds that your post will go viral quickly.
Know Your Users
One great technique of viral marketing is to take advantage of user generated content, which relies on your audience to create and share information for you. This engages your readers and, once they’re engaged, they’ll naturally want to draw in others to participate in the conversation.
Become a Fan
Joining fan pages via your Facebook page is a great way to drive traffic to your site. Of course, don’t just sign up for any old fan pages: choose those that relate directly to your service, product or cause, and give helpful comments on those pages often (at least once a week). And when you do comment, include links to similar pages as well as your own.
Be Social
Consider investigating a social bookmarking site where you can upload your content and posts, but if you do so opt for the automated bookmarking sites such as SocialPoster or SocialMarker. All you need to do is post some URLs into various fields and they’ll automatically be submitted to dozens of sites across the web.
Maintain Your Quality
It’s great to be a prolific poster to social media sites, but if you really want good viral results keep the quality of your work high and tight: blitzing sites with too much content means that people are, after a time, more likely to begin ignoring your postings, and so your chances of that content reaching mass appeal diminishes considerably.
Get and Stay Educated
As with so many things, timing is everything. And in order to get your content to go viral, it’s important to be current and stay up-to-date on the latest events in the world, trends in pop culture etc. When you identify a topic that’s currently popular and that aligns with your brand, craft your content around that topic.
