How to Do Viral Marketing Campaigns with Examples
As content marketers, we strive to create content that our audience likes and shares. In other words, we would do whatever it takes for a viral content marketing.
However, creating content that gets viral doesn’t come easily to most of us. The reason — we often fail to create content that is worthy of being shared.
We will talk about 5 ways that can help you in viral content marketing in India.
1. Long-form Content Works in the Longer Run
According to a study by Buzzsumo, long-form blogs have a tendency to work better as compared to short-form blogs. Another study by Google also says that long-form blogs up to 1900 words find themselves on page 1 search.
The reason is for their popularity is because the long-form articles build trust and also create an authoritative presence.
Your audience will be more engaged with it and will share it in their circles.
Apart from getting shares and views, the average time spent by a user on your blog post also increases, because the users find value in reading it.
Blog platform Medium conducted an interesting analysis on their own platform. They measured the average time spent by users on their blog in relation to the post length and the amount of time it takes the average user to complete the post.
Based on the analysis, they found out that — a user takes about 7 minutes to read a blog post of about 1600 words
Take a moment and look at the analytics by Buzzsumo for this blog post by Rob Garner. It has got 2,400 shares and 8,400 reads. The reason for its crazily high popularity is that a) It provides valuable and in-depth information to the user and b) It solves a problem that the users might be facing.
Another example of a successful long-form content strategy is Airbnb. Corporate collateral, especially annual report is so dull that it would put the colour grey to shame.
However, Airbnb, made brightened up their annual report by making it very interactive.
Because of this, in the year 2012, they grew from 1,20,000 listings to 3,00000 listings.
We at WittyPen also largely focus on long-form articles. For example, our blog post on content audit is comprehensive and well-researched. We did this because we want our users to feel benefitted when they make an exit from the blog-post. Our purpose is to not have a click-bait headline that does draw the user to the page but makes them leave at the same time.
2. Connect with Your Audience on an Emotional Level
It is simple. Human beings react to emotions. If an external stimulus strikes an emotional chord with you or influences your behaviour then you are bound to react to it.
For example, a film like Bhaag Milkha Bhaag might leave you motivated and teary-eyed at the end, or a movie like Munna Bhai MBBS will unfailingly crack you up.
Psychologist Robert Plutchik is known for his wheel of emotions concept.
The wheel highlights eight primary emotions that guide human behaviour:
- Joy
- Trust
- Fear
- Surprise
- Sadness
- Anticipation
- Anger
- Disgust
Here is a perfect example of a successful viral marketing campaign in India, that catered to the emotions of its audience at the right time.
Amul is one of the best examples of successful viral marketing campaigns in India. They did a brilliant job in garnering the desired response(anger) from the audience on an already trending topic “Net Neutrality”.
The quirky creative with the equally quirky content went viral because it was around a topic that evoked millions of angry reactions.
3. Create Kick-Ass Videos
Videos content if crafted smartly can easily get viral. Below is a living proof of this.
In 2016, Ixigo launched an innocent little content experiment. The experiment works really well as the case study for a successful and viral marketing example. This video hit 50 million views organically and sky-rocketed their app installs on both iOS and Android. The CTA to use the app on the Ixigo Facebook page drove app downloads too.
Aashish Chopra, Ixigo’s star content marketer was responsible for this powerful strategy.
Aashish was quoted saying”I prefer videos as it’s a more immersive experience.
According to him, you should do the following if you want to practice effective video marketing,
1.Pick kick-ass topics
2. Find a video from around the world, which comes close to what you want in terms of sensibility
3. Get your video guys or film-making students (Keeps costs low. They are a passionate and skilled bunch! I love them) to shoot it.
Youtube is also considered to be the best channel to create viral content for the brand by many content marketers.
Vogue continues to be an industry expert in lifestyle and fashion, however, at the same time, it touches social issues as well — such as women empowerment against violence.
#VogueEmpower, was one such initiative by the brand that represented women empowerment. The reason for its virality was one — the topic, and two — its powerful storytelling.
4. Listicles Work Wonders
Pick some of the successful viral content marketing campaign examples, and listicles easily make their way in all these campaigns. There are many reasons as to why listicles still work.
1. The headlines are straightforward.
Headlines show the potential readers what the content is all about, thus setting the right expectations.
This headline of this post talks about how lovely Blake Lively looked at certain events in 2016, and it contains just that.
2. They use beautiful images
Images that are visually appealing to the readers. Look at the example below and you will understand what we are saying.
3. The content that they share is helpful.
For example, a Buzzfeed listicle like the one below will be labelled as helpful by many working people who want to stay fit, but can’t because of their work schedules.
5. They appeal to human emotions like fear, amusement, joy, sadness etc.
For example in the post below, half the readers while just casually skimming through the post only would have felt the jitters.
5. Focus on User-Generated Content
User engagement is the perfect answer to — how to create a successful viral marketing campaign. User-generated content takes engagement beyond sharing, and maes it interactive.
An example of this is Oreo India’s #PlayWithOreo Campaign: This global social media campaign was rolled out by Cadbury Oreo in 2015 to inspire the imagination of Oreo Lovers in India with the world’s most favourite cookie brand.
Many interesting contests were carried out as a part of this playful social media campaign
What’s more?
All user-generated content was captured by a micro-site. For example, #DoodleIt was a doodle making contest where Oreo lovers were invited to make doodle art using an Oreo sandwich cookie, click a picture of the doodle and share the image on Twitter or Facebook using the hashtag #DoodleIt.
The Takeaway
Not every piece of content that you create will immediately go viral. Viral content marketing takes some time to show results. It takes perpetual efforts, thorough analysis and a good amount of patience to get at that level.
But, by taking a note of these tips and implementing them in your content marketing strategies, you will certainly increase the chances of your content getting viral.
We at WittyPen can help you get started with content that can go viral. Download the E-book below to get some great content delivered to your account.
Originally published at wittypen.com on March 31, 2018.
