2016

Jasper
Trinfinity | http://www.trinfinity.co

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Viral marketing is the only marketing virus that doesnt have a

vaccine. Viral content can be a game changer in getting traffic ,
leads and conversions regardless of what industry you're in. You
want your product and content to be seen by as many people as
possible.
But the viral marketing is unpredictable. Crafting a successful viral
marketing campaign is more difficult than it looks. It requires
careful planning and research. To go viral , you need to get a
number of things right. The content , the wording , the timing and
the channels. Elements of human behaviour and psychology are
predictable and can be leveraged. Covering enough of these bases
gives your work the best chance to go viral.

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THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO

CREATING VIRAL CONTENT
A successful viral campaign largely involves invoking strong
emotional reactions to your content.

A number of experts have been quick to point out that it is

impossible to create viral content and that virality is not a
product in itself but an effect. A viral reaction to an
image/blog post or a video can occur, but the content cannot
be viral through its very nature.
But Is That really True? Is It Possible To Create Viral
Content?

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IN THIS GUIDE :
What is virality and why do people share content?
Understanding, and then charming, your
customers with your content.
Some case studies of past viral content.
A suggested process for making content that will
be shared.

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VIRALITY
Viral marketing is a marketing strategy that uses existing social networks
to promote a product. It refers to how consumers spread information
about a product with other people in their social networks, much in the
same way that a virus spreads from one person to another.
The basis of viral marketing is in the spread of information by word-ofmouth (see Word-of-Mouth marketing), but modern technology has
allowed the viral effect to include many Internet-based platforms as well.
The main objective of viral marketing in a marketing context is to have
higher levels of engagement with consumers.

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Predicting viral content can be quite frustrating as it is very

unpredictable and what people may be inclined to share changes
now and then there are many pieces of great content that have
gone viral and plenty that have gone nowhere, so what are the
differences? And what commonalities (if any) do the pieces of
content that have gone viral share?
The emotional sentiment hidden in the content that are shared the
most to see are what largely what makes content go viral. Positive
content performs better than negative content but this largely
depends on the context.

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The key to social sharing is to hook the viewer/reader the more

you hook them (positively or negatively), the more active they are
in sharing content; even content that is unrelated to the cause of
their mood.
Positive content that inspires surprise, amusement and awe is
shared more. Negative content that inspires anger and anxiety is
shared more.

Content that inspires low emotional arousal (sadness) is less viral.

People share content for different reasons. Example, in the hope
that it will raise their social standing, generate reciprocity (i.e. to
get something tangible or not in return) , to simply to help others
and to entertain others.

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Hence, its no surprise that surprising and interesting

content is highly viral. Similarly, consistent with the
notion that people share to inform others, or boost their
mood, practically useful and positive content is more
viral.
As much as we have said there is no sure way of reverse
engineering viral content, lets cover some bases that will
set you up for success in your viral marketing efforts.

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1. HEADLINES
Write headlines that leave no ambiguity
Some headline types resonate more over others. For your content to go viral, you need to have resonating
headline. 80% of readers never make it past the headline: According to some sources, on average, eight
out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only two out of 10 will read the rest.
As we started out saying, there has never been more content vying for reader attention more channels,
more content, more publishers all competing for our time and mind share. This means the modern
internet user is forced to be more discerning about the headlines they click on, and is hyper-cognizant of
where they are investing their time.

Traffic can vary by as much as 500% based on the headline: According to Research by a Viral Media Site
Upworthy , tests show that traffic to content at Upworthy can vary by as much as 500% simply because
of the headline. "The headline is our one chance to reach people who have a million other things that
they're thinking about, and who didn't wake up in the morning wanting to care about feminism or climate
change, or the policy details of the election," says co-founder Peter Koechley.
The more explicit the headline is the higher chances that the reader is going to read the article.

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Put another way, humans don't like uncertainty. A

headline like "30 Ways viral marketing is worse than
dating Taylor swift" removes any ambiguity about
what the article is going to do for me. It tells me
exactly what I will and will not get from it: This may be
a reason why BuzzFeed has found such success with
readers using these headline types.
Headlines with numbers are two times more likely to
generate clicks vs. how to headlines, according to
research by Conductor. And a study of 150,000
headlines revealed that odd-numbered headlines have
a 20% better CTR than headlines with even numbers.

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2. USE [BRACKETS]

Bracketed clarifications, which are

clarifications of the type of content
represented by the headline - e.g.
[Infographic], increase CTR when included in
headlines. In an analysis of over 3 million
headlines, Outbrain found using [brackets] in
a headline bumped up CTR by 38%.

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3.
SHORT DESCRIPTIVE URLS ARE
2.5X MORE LIKELY TO ATTRACT A CLICK.
No, not all of the web's links are that messy. However, many links are long and
wordy for SEO reasons. One of the factors Google and other search engines
consider in ranking are keywords in the URL. This creates a conundrum for the
user - the URLs help describe the content, but are lengthy and are not easy to
share on emails, web pages, and especially social media services like Facebook
and Twitter. Shorter URLs are becoming more and more integral to getting traffic
and sharing content.
Permalinks to your content will also perform better if they are descriptive for
example for viralmarketing.com/cool-cats over
viralmarketing.com/blog/post?id=5421!6g.

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4.

INTRO=SHORT SENTENCES:

People only read 28% of a blog post, so you need to hook them fast.
Master The Art Of Blog Post Introductions And Keep Your Readers
Reading. While introductions are the first impression for the reader, they
ought to be the last impression for the writer.
Examples ;
I once wrote a blog post that killed a man.

The 20,000 customer registered in our system, and the team let out a
victorious yell. Wed hit our goal, thanks to the red button.
What are we going to do about your low-performing blog?

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5.
COLORFUL HIGH QUALITY IMAGE
ABOVE THE FOLD:
Skyword research found that content with at least one image generated
94% more views on social media.

Any image --boosts content credibility by 75%. Setting a featured image

ensures your social shares include an image. Social shares with images
get 150% more retweets on Twitter and 53% more Likes on Facebook.
Image quality also makes a huge difference. An internal Marketing Sherpa
study found that pro images received 121% more Facebook shares than
semi-professional" photos.

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6.
TL:DR IS FOR NEY YORK TIMES BEST
SELLERS

Professor Dr. Jonah Berger found that longer content

was 76.8% more likely to be heavily shared. Aim for
at least 1,500 words per post. People feel content is
so valuable that they are willing to link to in-depth
content more than they are willing to link to content
that is short. Simply put, The social web prefers
content rich pages

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7.
PUT SHARE BUTTONS ABOVE THE
FOLD:

A Google study found that elements

above the fold are seen by 58% more
people than those pushed further down
the page

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8.

INCLUDE AN INFOGRAPHIC:

Info graphics generate 2.3x more

social shares than how-to posts,
according to data from
Buzzsumo.

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9.

PUBLISH TIMING

Timing is of optimum importance. Find the

optimum time to publish based on the time
when there is a lot of activity online and
your target audience is online.
27% of all social shares occur between 8am
and 12pm EST, Shareaholicdiscovered.

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10.

USE "SCANNABLE" TEXT:

Like short paragraphs, subheadings and

bulleted lists. Dr. JakobNielson
discovered that "scannable" online
content boosted readability by 47%.

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11. GET EMOTIONAL:

A study published in the Journal

of Marketing Research found
content that elicits the emotions
"awe", "surprise" or "anger" was
28.3% more likely to go viral

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12. MENTION INFLUENCERS:

Link to influential people in your

post (and let them know about it). A
Columbia University study found
that for your content to go viral,
influencer shares were "critical".

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13.

BE INSANELY PRACTICAL:

Highly-practical articles are

34% more likely to go viral.

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14. SEO TAG COPY=ADWORDS ADS:

Adwordsads are designed to

maximize clicks. Base your SEO title
and description tags on Adwordsads
to maximize traffic from search
engines.

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15. ASK PEOPLE TO SHARE:

Include a CTA at the end of your

post...and make it personalized.
Hubspotfound that targeted CTAs
("Share these weight loss tips")
outperformed generic CTAs ("share this
post") by 42%

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Thats it for our viral guide. To one

degree or another, all successful
viral marketing strategies use most
of the principles outlined above.
Learn these foundational principles
of viral marketing. Master them
and some good karma will
definitely come your way.

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Contact Us
phone numbers

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: 0708-420-724
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Contact Us Our Emails

General Inquiries: sasa@trinfinity.co
Sales: sales@trinfinity.co
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Support: support@trinfinity.co
Trinfinity Limited
Nairobi Kenya.

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