Having the opportunity to have something go viral on social media means an opportunity to build brand awareness and name recognition. Not to mention that you can accomplish these things in a far shorter time than with your tried and true social media strategies.
Perhaps your greatest chance lies in a video. Those are what, normally, go viral the most often. Photos come in second with engaging content holding on to third. The chances of going viral remain slim but videos and photos go viral on social media everyday. Plowing the road, of course, are the countless failures that preceded this sudden viral notoriety.
So, any strategies you need to keep in mind?
- Don’t be ridiculous with your expectations. You’re not going to get a million views on a video if you are not a Fortune 1000 company. If you’re small and humble brand can get a few thousand, or even as many as ten thousand views, that’s fantastic. That’s ten thousand more potential customers you didn’t have yesterday.
- Put some real creativity into it. Your best chances are with a social media video and, believe it or not, any video featuring a cat has the best chance. You don’t necessarily need a cat in your video but it may help. You must produce something that people will watch more than a couple of times and will send it along to all of their BFF’s.
- Try to know what the heck is going on out there in the real world. What are the current trends and fads? What is your target demographic talking about right now out on social media? Focus in on doing something related to what they are already engaged in.
- Humor is queen. People enjoy funny and comical and are more readily inclined to send it along to their chain. If you have no sense of humor, find someone who does. Preferably someone within your target demographic. Each generation tends to have its own particular skew on humor.
- Something controversial always has an excellent chance of going viral. It gets people talking even if they think it is a bit over the top. Don’t turn the social media audience against you, however. Don’t get roped in to believing the celebrity mantra of “any publicity is good publicity”. You don’t need people talking about you and your brand in a negative way. It defeats the whole purpose of going viral.
- Promote, promote, promote. Know what keywords and tags will be most helpful and then load your creation up everywhere you can and see what happens.
- You have hit the proverbial motherlode if somebody famous happens to see your video and send it along to their social media address book. Soon, you may be all over Facebook and Twitter. Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame may be just the shot your brand has been waiting for.
So, give it a shot if you feel so inclined. You have little to lose and even a social media video that does not go viral has still been effective in getting out the word on your brand.
SearchPro Systems
2024