How to Make Your Content Go Viral
The exact mathematical way
Let’s face it, as content creators, we all dream of going viral, don’t we? If you’re a writer, you want millions of people to read your blogs and eventually become a best-selling author — just like Mark ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**K’ Manson.
And if you’re a business owner who has just started a Shopify store, you want those constant ‘new sale’ notifications on your phone. Heck, even if you’re nothing but a millennial with a social media account, you want your latest post to get dozens of likes.
The bottom line is: Almost everyone wants to go viral, so why not learn the process? Luckily, I came across the book The Lean Startup by Eric Ries which mentions the process of going viral in detail. Let’s discuss what it is.
The Story of Hotmail
In 1996, when the founders of Hotmail, Sabeer Bhatia, and Jack Smith, were still unheard of, they told some people about their revolutionary idea — a free email service called Hotmail that anyone could sign up for. But some people heard “hot male” instead of “Hotmail”.
Can you imagine how they must have felt at that time? You work your ass off to transform the email world and people think you are about to launch a porn site to enjoy naked hot males.
However, they were persistent. They didn’t change their brand name to make it sound less porny (not sure if that’s a word). But it didn’t help. Things were still the same until they made one small change. They added a clickable call-to-action at the bottom of every single email — “P.S. Get your free e-mail at Hotmail.”
Fast-forward six months after this change, Hotmail signed up a whopping 1 million new customers. The number of sign-ups doubled five weeks later. 18 months after they started, they gathered 12 million subscribers.
And what happens when a startup like this goes viral? Well, a bigger fish buys it. So in 1997, Microsoft acquired Hotmail for around $400 million.
Let’s Understand the Term ‘Viral Coefficient’
The viral coefficient is sort of a mathematical term, but we’re going to keep it simple here. In layman’s terms, it measures the number of new customers an existing customer will bring on board after buying a product or consuming content.
For example, if a product has a viral coefficient of 0.1, that means every one in ten customers will directly or indirectly influence their friend to buy that product. And if a product has a viral coefficient of 1, then it means that every customer will influence at least one of their friends to buy it.
Let’s take the fidget spinner for an example. This is how I imagine the fidget spinner must have gone viral:
Person A: “Hey, what’s that thing?”
Person B: “That’s a fidget spinner. It helps relieve anxiety.”
Person A: “Can I try it?”
Person B: “Sure, have a go.”
Person A (tries the fidget spinner): “This is kinda cool. Where did you buy it from?”
This type of conversation might have occurred hundreds of thousands of times before the fidget spinner went viral. This is exactly how videos on YouTube go viral and this is also how some crazy people become famous.
How to Apply This to Your Content or Product
Simply remember: The higher the viral coefficient, the better it is. When you create online content (or a product, or a service, or whatever else), add at least one feature in it that makes people want to show it to their friends.
This is exactly how fidget spinners, the Me Too movement, Bhad Bhabie, and Gangnam Style went viral. Whether it’s a product or a social movement, if it makes people not want to go to sleep until they have shared it with their friends — that’s when things go viral.
Another strategy is to reward an existing customer when they bring new customers to your business. This is why companies like Skillshare and Transferwise offer commissions to users who bring new users to their platform. It’s all word-of-mouth marketing, basically. Even in the digital age, word-of-mouth is still powerful.
But unlike the olden times when people told about a fascinating product or sensational news to their friends in person, we have social media apps these days. Nevertheless, the principle is still the same — spreading the word to close ones.
Hashtags have made achieving a higher viral coefficient a heck of a lot easier. When a hashtag associated with a product or a person goes viral, the latter go viral with the hashtag. In fact, I simply used viral hashtags to gain 2500 Instagram followers — no paid promotions or influencers — not a dollar spent. I’ve written a blog about it if you want to learn how.
Why This Blog Won’t Go Viral
Right now, I’m writing a blog about how to make your content go viral. But the irony is, this blog will not go viral at all. I know it.
And you know why it won’t go viral? Because readers of this blog will be fine even if they don’t share it with their friends. There’s nothing new, eyebrow-raising, or sensational in this blog.
However, if there was a video of a squirrel flying an airplane or some charcoal-based teeth whitener that instantly makes your smile sexy, then you’d probably send it in a group chat to your homies.
But that doesn’t mean you need to create attention-seeking and cringeworthy content. For example, the book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**K by Mark Manson went viral because the title itself was very bold and has a curse word in it — something that has rarely been done before by an author. There are many other books like this with similar information, but this one became a bestseller because people wanted to talk about it with their friends.
So keep creating content, products, startups, or whatever else you wish — but never forget the term ‘viral coefficient’.
