Need to go viral on social media?

If you wish to succeed today, you know you need to be on social media. Having a piece of content go viral, however, is the holy grail that every small business searches for. For a business to have a chance to succeed at producing viral content, it simply can’t be a matter of chance. It must be a matter of careful planning and precise deployment of resources.

• The first thing you need to understand, and truly know, is the audience you are after. If you don’t know who they are and what they want and what they may share then you have no chance of producing anything likely to go viral. Actually assemble a social media marketing team, or firm, that will create your ideal customer. The profile needs to be as complete as possible. The research, of course, involves actually going out online and talking with your customers so that you can get a true feel for them and what they expect from you.
• After you know who they are, you need to know where they are. Every social media platform is different and you know this. This is why you will know which platforms to use to attract the customer base you are looking for. Choose those platforms that will have the highest concentration of your demographic. You may want to use a couple of them especially the well trafficked ones like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram.
• Now that you know who they are and where they are, you should know exactly what they want to see from you and your company. This is how you plan and raft your content. The engagement factor is an absolute must as most of the major social media platforms have an algorithm that actually measures whether a piece of content will actually be engaged with by its member audience. The content, therefore, ends up getting ranked for the most part so creating engaging content is actually the tipping point for any social media marketing campaign that looks for a piece of content to get shared and to go viral.
• Finally, a few last hacks to ensure your next campaign goes viral. Make sure there are clear calls to action. Track down and cultivate as many social media influencers as you can. Supplement your efforts with a well targeted advertising campaign and know when the est times to post content are at the various platforms. Also, always be evaluating, always be studying your data, always be tweeking. In these ways, your chances of having viral success with your social media marketing capmpaigns becomes greater.

-Written by Kevin Sawyer