The real secret of going viral on social media
Have you done many posts on social media, tried your best to follow trends, do listicles, videos and pumped in lots of advertising dollars to boost your posts but people are just not engaging with your content?
Do you always feel like you are at the mercy of social media algorithms?
I feel you. When I first started on digital marketing, I did all of these too, hoping things will go viral, only to find out that I was doing it wrong for years.
Going viral is not about luck, following social media algorithms, nor the platform.
Think about the last few posts you shared personally on your social media. Do you realise that you shared them because they are:
- New and useful → you feel important when you share
- Shocking → you feel sad or angry when you share
- Silly or funny → you feel happy when you share
What do all these have in common?
They trigger emotional responses. And emotions are contagious.
“When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion,” Dale Carnegie said in his bestseller ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’.
That’s the reason why when we promoted one of our first articles, ‘25 Reasons why you should never travel to Indonesia’, we used this title for both SEO and social media which ended up having 20 times more engagement than the original title (top post vs bottom post):
The top post works simply because it successfully invokes emotions in people. Take a look at some of the comments we received:
One key secret of great marketing strategy since decades ago, even before the age of digital marketing, is this — you need to sell emotions.
Once you understand how to invoke emotional responses in your audience, you will have the social media algorithms working for you.
All screenshots and illustrations by Mehthesheep Academy unless otherwise stated.
Co-written and edited by Candice Neo
