Having an online presence for your business is imperative in this day and age. You must have a website and you must have active social media accounts. To be active online entails creating and propagating captivating content. The content you create must be captivating enough to lead to engagements which in turn lead to sales and drawing of insights. Most businesses online simply understand this from a basic and shallow standpoint. They are online and do appreciate that they must post content online. However, they are not exactly sure what type of content to post that will drive engagements up. It is the desire of any business to post content that becomes viral and in this article, I discuss 5 types of content that have been proven to go viral.
What Makes People Laugh
People love to have a good laugh from time to time no wonder they love jokes. If you come up with content that is hilarious or you package your content in hilarious ways it will reach far and wide. Let us take a local look at how most brands are advertising their goods or services online. They are enlisting the services of comedians to come up with hilarious ways of advertising. For instance, several brands are leveraging on comedians like Comic Pastor and Nigel to come up with content that makes people laugh. People are naturally wired to share content that is funny and in the process, the content spreads virally. People are even cognizant that this is marketing but they get so hooked because of the hilarious nature of the content. Consider also the Mambos Chicken e-fliers, very funny twists that take advantage of current affairs. Always remember content that makes people laugh tends to go viral. It does not have to just be videos always – memes can work great as well.
Remarkable Things
Something that is remarkable is something that is unusual, striking or worthy of notice. This is an open-ended category because so many things can be regarded as remarkable. I will cite a funny example involving the late Kobe Bryant. There is a video on YouTube where Kobe Bryant stood in front of an oncoming speeding vehicle and jumped over it when it got to him. There were lots of speculations of whether that was real or fake and the video spread around the internet. Here is what is interesting, at the beginning of the video he starts off by showing a Nike sneaker and then does the stunt afterwards. Most people were so drawn to the stunt and only realized later it was actually an ad. What made it viral? The stunt he did in the video was so striking or worthy of notice. Remember I said this is an open-ended type of viral content – there is an infinite number of ways you can create such content.
Things That Appeal To People’s Emotions
In one of my articles I once talked about how that you must cultivate an emotional attachment between your brand and your customers. You must come up with content that appeals to people’s emotions. It could be feelings of excitement, empathy, and so on – essentially making people relate emotionally. For instance, if as a business you address a dire need in a community and use that as content people will get emotionally engaged. Even coming up with ads that are emotionally striking can make for viral content. There is a Volvo ad I once saw; I would encourage you to watch it to see what I mean by appealing to people’s emotions.
Valuable Information
One way to create viral content is to provide valuable information. It could be statistics, it could be current affairs, it could be tried and tested ways of doing things, and so on. If ever you are online you will notice that most people title their content with “secrets to…” or “did you know…” and the like. All this catchy and click-bait because people are so keen on acquiring valuable information. Content that has valuable information always reaches far and wide online.
What Makes People Feel Great About Themselves
These days people are getting more and more conscious of doing things that make them feel great. People now pay close attention to self-actualization, their self-images and their personal emotional and physical wellness. People are so in love with content that tells them how great they are, how they can do and achieve anything, how they are valuable and relevant, and so on. That is why you find that Arthur Marara’s content is viral because it is content that challenges people to do great things and to feel great about themselves. You can inculcate this same approach in the content you create for your business. The approaches are definitely countless but the crux is to create content that makes people great about themselves. Such content will normally go viral because people will share it online.
These are 5 of some of the top types of content that have been proven to go viral. A healthy blend of these for your business’ online marketing will do wonders for your business. It is important to take time to do your own research to see what really goes viral for your line of business – contexts differ and matter at times.
