It is not easy to make content that goes viral on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Stumble Upon, You Tube, etc, but it is possible to do, and a lot of people focus on trying to make that happen, more than anything else.
A viral page is a page that gets spread through word of mouth, through social shares, and if it works, it can work a thousand times better than ranking on the first page of Google for a minor search.
The number one place where things go viral is You Tube. A good funny or bizarre video can spread through the internet like wildfire, and it doesn’t take all that much to give it that chance to burn.
It has to be something that evokes an emotion, and the best way to evoke emotion is through humor, and people think things are funny that are unusual, somewhat bizarre.
For example, take a look at this video I made today, it’s called Oh My God! What Is That!
Making Viral Content
You may like that video, or you may think it’s utterly useless, and that’s the sort of chance you take when you try to create viral content.
Some people are good at it, and others aren’t. Some people will like a certain video, and others won’t like it, or they will have different opinions about two videos that use the exact same formula.
It’s not a science, it’s an art, and the only way to get good at it is to do it, try as many different things as you can think of, and hope for the best.
On that video, I didn’t even put a link in the description, and you might well ask why I even made the video at all.
It isn’t selling anything, it’s not got a link to anything, it’s not even saying anything slightly important, or relevant to anything.
But, I’m hoping that people will like the video, and that if people see it, they might share it with their friends, and then those people might possibly share it with their friends.
It’s the sort of video that could take off and get tons of views, and if it doesn’t, well it’s just another video to add to the rest.
If it did get lots of views, like a million views, then that might mean lots of subscribers, back links to the video, comments, a better channel rank, and perhaps views on my other videos, because the links to my other videos appear in the sidebar.
Every video I make helps my other videos rank, so long as the videos I make are entertaining, and have a good bounce rate.
If I continually make videos that people don’t want to watch, then they will all start to lose ranking and views, and that’s what I don’t want to happen.
I wrote an article today on Knoji as well, called what do people want to see online? which also talks about how to make viral content for social media sites like Stumble Upon.
I have a blog where I post my favorite You Tube videos, which aren’t mine, I just get the embed code for things that I find entertaining enough to go viral, and write a short description underneath.
That whole site has a banner ad to this site, and it looks inconspicuous enough to not affect the popularity of the pages I’m making, which are just the best videos on You Tube.
That’s just one example of how to make viral content easily, although you will do better if you make your own videos. Lots of my Stumble Upon followers just take Rage comics and publish them on their blog.
They don’t seem to care at all about Google rankings, and for the most part, they seem to do pretty well by just taking someone else’s stuff, putting it on their blog, and sharing the page with all their friends.
I would advise you to be a little careful about that, as photos do have copyright issues, (unlike You Tube videos), but that’s the sort of things you can do if you don’t care much about Google.
Viral content is pages that get millions of views, and it’s not hard to find out what sort of pages go viral, and that will give you an idea of what you might want to be making.
