How to take your sh*t viral (Part I) — Musings on why your attempts to create sharable content fail
By: Richie Cunningham, Staff Writer
Let’s clear the air immediately: this post will NOT tell you all the things you’re doing wrong in the pursuit of creating sharable conent. Unlike other Medium advice, this story will not include lots of fancy charts showing you why my content succeeds…
- Because it doesn’t.
Instead, this story will attempt to discover how to expand readership and followers by looking to authorities on the topic. You’re reading this for the same reason I’m writing it: we need a collection of examples and instruction on how to expand our ideas … because we know our ideas are good (maybe even better than some of the stuff out there garnering vast attention). Before we begin, permit me an anecdote. The guy you see below is Eli R. Stevens. A friend sent me a Tik Tok (disclaimer, I didn’t know what Tik Tok was 2 weeks ago) of this 20 year old holding 10 burgers he bought for $10.
When I first saw @elirsteves Twitter account he had about 70 followers. That was ~ten days ago. As of the time of this post, he has 9,981. He didn’t go 10x, he went about 150x.
Pardon my French, but WTF?!?
I recall vitality expert, Professor Jonah Berger, once saying that your idea needs to be either safe or similar to something that’s already been done, but also needs to be unique and fresh. If that sounds like an oxymoron, ponder the concept more. Some of Eli’s other TikTok’s are a little dark, (inaccessible to broader audiences?) like this one: https://www.tiktok.com/@elirsteves/video/6718827198997941509?langCountry=en
The takeaway of our introductory topic is the virality appears to begin with some unique twist on an existing concept. Here’s an video compilation of the most popular TikTok’s of 2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k9ooTAOaas
…all the videos involve people singing along to popular music (but not top 40, that’s not unique enough) mostly involving sound and video editing. I don’t find the videos interesting (you likely don’t either) but that’s not the point, somebody does — and they share it-many, many times.
This ripple effect is the essence of Ryan Holiday’s early work: create sharable content as opposed to marketing existing content; then as experts like Scott Fox (author of Click Millionaires) and Gary Vaynerchuk (author of Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook) recommend, build trust with an audience without selling them anything (that comes later).
Please leave this article knowing future stories will thorougly vet Ryan Holiday, Jonah Berger, Scott Fox, and even the book Influencer Marketing for Dummies (by kristy sammis and Stefania Pomponi). If you can’t wait, read this story: https://medium.com/@RyanHoliday/growth-hacking-your-way-to-viral-lift-50b1817df7a8 (Ryan says you shouldn’t use curse words in story titles, hmmm).
Future entries will link to books and articles in greater detail. For now, let’s just start working on this … together.
In the meantime, you might as well go to twitter.com/elirsteves and see if Eli is over 10,000 followers.
You’re watching virality in action.
UPDATE: Read Part II of this story here.
