How to create viral content? 10 steps
Good old word “creative” is outmoded. It’s too boring. It’s too slow, too… well, uncreative. The world demands better. Viral. The content that gets quoted, reposted and covered the moment it’s posted.
Let’s see how you can create the viral content of the New Age.
You may think that those vivid lunatic ideas are created by a group of addicts, who use drugs and generate catchy and viral creatives. Well, it may be true sometimes. But that’s a topic for another article. Here, we’ll talk about a system. The system that helps to create a high-quality viral content almost without harm to your health.
As the classic goes, there are two pieces of news. The good is that anyone can do it. The bad stands for a whole lot of work.
A good comedian doesn’t laugh at his own jokes
Do you know why? He understands that he has to make his audience laugh, not himself. The best joke (the one comedian thinks to be the best) may not even cause a shadow of a smile of those at whom it was actually targeted. Yes, again, everything rests upon the target audience. That’s why:
Step 1. Define your target audience
Who should be infected with your incredible viral creativity? Whose phone should heat up because of your likes and reposts? Maybe those are mommies who are currently on their parental leave? Or maybe those are 10 years old fans of a popular blogger? Or the serious fellas with tattoos on their fingers? It’s up to you to choose (or up to the product/service you do your best for). Chose already? Let’s move on!
Step 2. Pain spots and interests
A typical mistake at this point is to think of what may be interesting for your target audience. The truth is, the thing that will be really interesting, won’t ever become viral. You should relocate your focus and think of pain spots instead of interests. Look for something that worries and hurts the most — injustice, life situation, difficulties. The more it hurts, the more promising it is (yep, that’s cruel, I know).
Step 3. Dark humor and open chakras
It turned out so the majority of viral materials contain humor or satire. Well, people like to laugh at problems they cannot solve. Clickbaits and sensations work worse and worse and leave only a small field of work with the older age group.
That’s why you should think of a joke. Write down a thousand of thoughts that pop up in your head. If you have a team — great, write down 10 thousand ideas. Leave all the boundaries behind, try to think as your target audience. Note all the silly, boring, crazy ideas that come to your head. If your chakras don’t open, prescribe yourself a dose of TikTok treatment. Nothing takes off brain’s limits better. Remember: the stranger, the trendier.
Step 4. Drafting. Frames and options
It’s important to think of frames at this stage. If created earlier, the frames of acceptable and appropriate can just cut off the oxygen (aka creativity).
When you already have hundreds of silly ideas in front of you it’s time to ruthlessly kill a part of those. At this stage you shouldn’t cross out bad or uninteresting (as they may seem to you) ideas, but dangerous ones. The ones, that could cause backlash and bring you more harm than benefits.
I should state, it’s easier to create a negative virus than a positive one. For example, you can send your pizzeria’s customers offensive messages and get noticed. You can shoot a sexual ad and incur the wrath of society. This will be viral, but there’s a question on context and impact on your reputation. If that’s an appropriate option for you, you can stop here. Just choose something most amoral for your TA. But we will keep looking.
Step 5. Grouping and building a snowflake
You now have dozens of ideas that want to become viral. You’ve crossed out everything amoral and illegal and you’re now staring at a big list of the rest. If you did a good job before, there will be nothing you like at this point. This is a good sign.
Writers use a snowflake method. That’s the one when you add facts and details to the given base. We will try to create something similar. Create at least one variation to each idea. You can create more. Don’t hold yourself back. It can be a modified idea, an associative series, another presentation — anything.
Step 6. Sleeping and a bunch of paper sheets
I like this stage the most. It includes a break. It’s perfect, when it includes sleeping. Leave aside your notes for a day or two and look at them with a fresh look. If you’re short on time, you can skip the sleep and ask someone for help. Someone who wasn’t engaged previously. But an option with sleeping is better, isn’t it?
Making marks. At this stage you can mark groups of snowflakes as well as parts of your snowflake. Do not skimp on paper and try to leave not more than one idea in one snowflake. Delete everything you find inappropriate. Leave all the best and the most perspective.
Step 7. Testing time
Finally, it’s time. Time for the comedian to gather his mom, his granny and a sister, to take his notes into his hands and to start reading. To read and observe the reaction. Try hard to find some cousins for this experiment (preferably 10 or 20 of them) from the selected target audience. You can promise them a glass of milk for this harmful and ungrateful work. Mark your ideas in three ways: “bad”, “incomprehensible”, “good”. When you’re done, throw away anything that isn’t marked “good.”
Step 8. Final one. Well, almost.
Everything that passes the last stage can be visualised. There’s no sense to continue choosing. You will not be able to predict (given the subjectivity of human nature) which of the options will work best. You have good options. And among them may not be The One (then just go back to step 1, I warned that there would be a lot of work). The ideal scenario is to gradually and non-aggressively run all of the options one by one and keep your finger on the pulse. As soon as it starts to spread like a wildfire (if you’re lucky, it won’t happen at night, when you will finally be resting from all that creativity) sharply increase budgets and try to control. Although with a really good virus you may not succeed in that.
It’s important to clarify that the form is a secondary feature. If you’re not Coca-Cola with many bureaucratic restrictions, you can let yourself offhandedly create visuals. Mediocre quality is enough if the sense is easily understood.
If you are Coca-Cola and you cannot publish a phone-recorded video on your webpage, stage 7 will mean a full-fledged closed A/B testing of focus groups. If you are Coca-Cola, you surely know how it’s done.
Another piece of advice — don’t philosophize too much. Your TA is now in a hurry more than ever. Hundreds of businesses fight over its attention simultaneously. A complex viral may be a bit too large to swallow for your TA. Even if the viral is very good.
Step 9. Life of an artist
Next — you return to stage 1. Whether you succeed or not, the world still wants to be sick of viral content and will be grateful to be infected by you. Therefore you should work tirelessly on iteration after iteration.
There is an antivirus for each virus, and then a new virus will appear from somewhere. If life is cyclical, the life of the creator is all the more cyclical. People want to be “sick”, they want to constantly consume something new and unprecedented. The good old flashmob and “copy this message to 30 friends” suffocates under the pressure of fashion trends that stretch our brains to the verge of reason. These are trends and this is a new reality. And only those who know how to let go and create without restrictions survive in the new reality. And only the creators know that this is systematic and hard work. Even if the result looks like a coincidence.
Step 10. A finger on the pulse
Oh no, we didn’t finish at the previous step. There is one more extremely important thing. You have to (!) monitor the trends. If you’re scrupulous, you have all the chances to catch a wave of someone’s viral that is gaining momentum and use it at your own advantage. Who says you can’t do that? Artists borrow, it has been so since time immemorial and there is nothing shameful about it.
Catch this thread in time, run it through your target audience, quickly (in this world soon everything will be done just like that) grind a little and release! The bird is ready. Fly, darling, fly! Infect, cause an itchy desire to copy, paste, adapt, repost, replay, twist or join your flight.
Resume
The world changes rapidly and it may seem that the content suffers from it. Simple constructs appear instead of complex ones. Longreads are replaced by shortreads. And marketing needs to adjust. This is a fait accompli.
However, the creation of the desired content is all the same old schemes. Decide what you are advertising and for whom. Look for pain spots. Come up with a lot of ideas. Filter, test, design. And do so in a circle. In the new reality, the old scheme works the same as before. As always.
A marketer cannot be a conservative, he cannot defend “correct” approaches or “correct” placements. Otherwise, it will simply be replaced by a more flexible marketer. Therefore, I wish you to be open and learn to perceive new trends and formats not as difficulties, but as a new challenge. Because it is the challenges that make our profession so beautiful, multifaceted and influential. Fly, birds!
