When you make your own website, the goal is to attract as many visitors to it as possible. One of the best ways to attract website visitors is to create viral content. Though it may be the best, it’s also one of the most difficult.

Today we’ll be giving you the low-down on creating viral content. For insights on what types of posts go viral, writing with masculinity in mind, and tips on how to prime your content to be the “next big thing,” keep reading.

1. Create Content That is Worthy of Going Viral

The first step to making viral content is to create content that is worthy of going viral. If you create the content of poor quality, you’ll get poor results. Make sure that your content is relevant, well-written, well-researched, and free from typos & grammatical errors.

The viral content you’ve seen has gone viral for a reason. Some reasons are more comfortable to identify than others. For instance, posts about the coronavirus are going viral because they’re relevant to readers right now. Just a few weeks ago, such a position wouldn’t have garnered any attention.

Create Content That is Worthy of Going Viral

On the other hand, nobody could have predicted the overnight viral sensation that was Psy’s Gangnam Style. Nobody, other than those who spent weeks prepping it for potency that is!

2. Key Ingredients in the Recipe for Virility

a) Emotion evoking

Viral posts need to make their reader or viewer feel something. There’s no way around that. Content that evokes feelings of awe, amusement, joy, and empathy often go viral. Want to know what kind of emotion you should aim to evoke? Based on the number of shares, here are the feelings that lead to content going viral:

  • Awe: 25%
  • Laughter: 17%
  • Amusement: 15%
  • Other: 15%
  • Joy: 14%
  • Anger: 6%
  • Empathy: 6%
  • Surprise: 1%
  • Sadness: 1%

b) Positive

The nation can be a scary place, and people don’t need constant reminders of that. That’s why content that evokes feelings of anger only gets shared 6% of the time, and those that evoke sadness get shared 1% of the time.

So if you’re hoping to increase your chances of your content going viral, keep it positive. Even if your content doesn’t revolve around a topic that is traditionally viewed as positive, put a positive spin on it, at least.

c) Practical

More often than not, the content that goes viral is written with practicality in mind. People are always on the lookout for things that can make their daily lives more comfortable, and when they find such things, they want the world to know.

Think ‘How To’ articles, in-depth topic guides, and infographics that pack a whole load of information into an easily digestible format.

d) Social Currency

Social currency is as valuable to content as real money is to the economy. Please make sure that your words are worth their weight in social currency to increase the likelihood of them going viral.

People want to share things that make them seem more intelligent, funny, cold, or “in the know,” so if you can pack that kind of social currency into your content, do so.

3. Prime Your Content for Going Viral

Once you’ve created content that you feel deserves to go viral, prime it to do so. Research has shown that material that goes viral typically share several formatting characteristics. Here’s what most viral written content has in common:

Longer length: When it comes to viral content, short is very rarely sweet. The bulk of all viral content is 3,000 to 10,000 words in length, while posts that are made up of less than 1,000 words receive the lowest number of shares.

Images: Posts with one or more images are shared more than twice as often as those that don’t feature pictures.

List format: Maybe it’s because they’re easy on the eyes or because they tend to make boring topics seem more attractive; either way, people love list-type posts. A list post gets shared 36% more often than other formats.

4. What Makes You Share Content?

When creating content with the specific aim of going viral, always keep the following at the front of your mind: what makes YOU share something?

When you see something on Facebook that immediately makes you hit the share button, please take a moment to think about why you want to share it.

  • Does it make you laugh or smile?
  • Does it make you stop and think?
  • Does it solve a particular problem?
  • Is it something that your friends and followers would enjoy reading, listening to, or watching?
  • Is it spreading awareness on an important issue that you feel everyone should know about?
  • Is it typically in text, image, or video format?

By identifying what makes you assist in a piece of content’s potency, you’ll be provided with an insight as to what you should incorporate into your content.

After all, your audience most likely has a lot in common with you as they chose to follow you. So the chances are: if you like something, they’ll love it too.

5. Conclusion

Creating great content takes a lot of time and effort. Who wouldn’t want the content they worked so hard on to go viral?

As you can see, going viral has more to do with strategic planning than it does luck. Do you think your content has what it takes to go viral? Implement the tips we’ve shared with you and find out for sure!