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Some websites have content that always seems to go viral. Millions of views seem like an easy target for them.
However, there is a certain formula to generating viral content even if you’re not a big name online. It involves enticing consumers with exclusive content, appealing to their tastes, and offering a little flavor.
Viral content is just content that has mass appeal. It’s hard to get to that rung of the ladder when it comes to content.
However, it’s possible for anyone, any brand, any company, or any independent contractor. All of this is possible if you continue to put your mind to a few rules.
So, here are a few copywriting tactics that can help your website go viral.
Personal is Always Better than Generic
Remember that a personal touch always stands out from generic content. Whatever product you’re selling or service you’re pushing to your readers, know that they appreciate different marketing approaches.
You can design a really creative poster or a really different ad slogan and your readers are more likely to click on the link than not.
However, know that being different for the sake of being different doesn’t always work out. People see through forced optimism. Do something that stands out that is uniquely you.
Do something that will make you stand out from the rest but be familiar with your own audience.
If this sounds incredibly hard, it’s because it is. Not many can crack this code. However, making your content go viral isn’t easy either.
One of the best examples of this is the viral ad from Dollar Shave Club. The team from the excellent razor delivery service kept it simple.
What seems like just a normal tour of their warehouse turned out to be a great marketing tactic. They didn’t have any flashy special effects or visuals.
However, they did present their product to the customer in a very friendly way. Their ad showed their customers that they were uncomplicated, ready to serve their base, and above board.
It didn’t seem like there was anything happening in the business that the customer didn’t understand. It’s that kind of consumable, easy to digest content that goes viral.
Make the Content Enticing
One thing that your content has to be in order to go viral is interesting. It needs to reel people in from the get go. Hence, you can try anything from beautiful visuals to catchy headlines and slogans to do this.
Remember that from the first sentence, clip or scene, your content needs to catch the visitor off guard. They need to be invested from the first time they lay eyes on your content.
A few ways to do this include:
Great Headlines: You can start off your content with a headline that targets your audience. This can tell you what the product does, its market, its benefits to the market, etc. Just make sure that the headline gives people a reason to stay when they read it.
Targeted subheadings: Following from the great headlines point, this serves to keep the reader interested as they scroll down the page. Most people can’t be bothered to read the entire article or content piece.
However, if they keep seeing markers that interest them, they may stay on for longer. Subheadings serve as markers for people to scroll or skip to the content they’re interested in.
Subheadings also play a part in Google snippets. These are direct answers to queries that are input to Google. If the query matches a heading or subheading, or one of the main sentences, it’ll be served to the user.
Take advantage of this technique to keep readers interested and to reel them in with high ranking search results.
Enticing Visuals: These can either be multiple images, a video, a great infographic, etc. Anything that helps the reader understand the text better in fact. The visuals can also serve to keep the viewer on the webpage as well.
Hence, the images don’t necessarily need to link right to the content. However, they do need to be interesting enough so that the viewer doesn’t get bored. In fact, certain images should make the reader want to read on and explore further.
Pay Attention to Presentation
Now this is a very wide subject to approach. It doesn’t just include making the content look good, but making the user experience pleasurable.
Hence, your content not only should be structured so that it’s easy to skim through or read through. It should also be a pleasure to scroll through your website and browse around.
Things like smooth scrolling, parallax scrolling, seamless web design, etc., all appeal to the reader. If your content is presented well, the reader is automatically wont to staying for more.
Just think of presentation in terms of a restaurant that serves average food but has great ambience. Of course, it would be great if it could do both, but the ambience works well in its favor.
Make Sure You Sound Professional as Well as Welcoming
You may have heard that long-form content tracks well with Google. It does. 1000-2000 word articles which contain a lot of facts and research do track well.
They’re filled with useful information so why shouldn’t Google serve them up? However, viral articles can’t be too professional or boring.
You’re trying to attract the widest audience possible, so you shouldn’t be aiming for business executives or data scientists.
The trick is to produce content that is fun to read, but also has a lot of useful facts and figures. Let’s say you’re writing content about decorating a house.
It wouldn’t hurt if you add in decorating advice from Marie Kondo or from famous celebrities now would it? You could also add in some facts and figures that encourage decorating your house to increase its value.
Facts and blurbs like these increase the authority of your content while making it interesting and enticing too. This way you don’t have to exchange being factual and objective for being entertaining and fun.
Go for Hi-Octane Emotions
If you’ve ever seen a viral video or a BuzzFeed quiz that went viral, you know it’s full of positive emotion. Whether it’s forced emotion or forced happiness is a separate issue.
That positive emotion seems to work. It reels people in because they want that positive emotion in their lives. It serves as an alternative to the negativity of all the news that people consume every day.
Hence, positivity and positive emotions are extremely important for viral content.
Sure, negative emotion also carries a lot of weight when it comes to viral content.
There are take-down pieces and negative reviews that often get a lot of attention. However, in the grand scheme of things, positive emotion trumps negative emotion when it comes to digital marketing.
Produce Content for a Niche Audience
Understanding your audience is important to produce regular, viral content. No matter how hard you try, you can’t always appeal to the general audience.
You should know that as a marketing professional. No matter how hard BuzzFeed tries, they’re not going to produce a quiz that ranks well with grandfathers as well as it does with teens and kids.
Hence, any content that you produce should have a particular target niche in order to go viral.
In order to appeal to the tastes of your audience, you should consistently produce content for them. Your objective should be to attract as much traffic as possible.
That’s only viable if you produce content your audience loves to read or consume. You can hire a copywriting service to help you produce weekly content for your niche audience.
Get Influencers to Promote Your Content
One of the most successful ways in which products are marketed today is influencer marketing. YouTubers, Tiktokers, SnapChatters, Instagrammers, etc. are all influencers today.
They use their platforms to market everything, from makeup to online learning platforms to grooming products. Hence, getting an influencer to push your product or service for you almost guarantees its virality.
Of course, you will have to reach out to more than one influencer if you really want to make a dent.
Build on Social Currency
This is a really hard metric to get right. You should be producing content that your users should love sharing. You have to understand that most people now think of their social media presence as their persona.
Hence, sharing content that their friends disagree with or make fun of is damaging to them. So any content that you would like them to share should be content that they should want to share.
It’s impossible to track what kind of social circle or interests every member of your audience has. However, you can look at the behavior of various customers and visitors.
Depending on their interests and shares, you can produce content they would love sharing or commenting on.
Just remember that your content should encourage engagement and conversation. That’s extremely important for it to go viral.
Encourage Your Audience Participation with a CTA
Don’t forget the CTA. It doesn’t just serve to market your products or services, but to get your audience to participate. If you make your audience feel like they’re part of the conversation, that will help you win the over.
Hence, a CTA doesn’t have to just be a slogan that links to your products and services. It can be asking your readers to fill out a survey or leave a comment expressing their views. It can ask them to vote on a poll, or voice their own opinion about a topic, etc.
This encourages engagement and conversation. Once you’ve got that going, you can more effectively market your products. In fact, something which starts a conversation is more likely to go viral.
That’s because it encourages commenting, liking, sharing, etc. More social media impressions and more activity on a content piece automatically puts it on Google’s radar.
Sticking to these rules will help you pump out content that will make your website go viral. Remember that not every shot will work.
However, you just need one that does. You can benefit exponentially from one piece of viral content than a hundred pieces of flat content.
