Creating Viral Content For Your Blog

Updated October 6, 2023
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If you’re a blogger or e-marketer, you likely spend your nights dreaming about reeling in huge swarms of traffic, hundreds of high-value back links and thousands of Twitter and Facebook fans.  Unfortunately, for the most part, building a fan base is a tedious process that occurs incrementally over time.  However, one way to expedite the process  and launch yourself to cyberspace fame is developing a piece or numerous pieces of viral content.

viral content

Be Imagistic

There are hundreds of videos on You Tube with over a million hits, while getting a million people to read an article is virtually impossible.  If you’re looking to go viral, visual content is the way to go, but don’t just slap up a goofy video of yourself without some planning.  Spend some time brainstorming a good video concept that’s unique and will engage your readers.  Consider hiring a professional videographer or at the least make sure you have a suitable video camera and editing equipment.  Lastly, don’t overlook the impact of a powerful or humorous image, which is much less time-consuming to create, but can also bring in large amounts of traffic.

Create a Quiz

Do you know how many fifth-graders you could beat up in a fight?  That question alone spawned one of the most successful viral online quizzes, which gauged a respondents success in a middle-school brawl from his answer to a series of questions.  Funny quizzes are easy to design and the sort of thing that people love to forward throughout the office, making them great for viral success.

Infographics

By combining two things Internet users desire–primary information and visuals–an infographic is a great way to draw a viral surge to your website.  A few examples of infographics include showing the U.S. debt by an image of $100 bills stacked against the World Trade Center or the history of Apple by an actual tree with leaves flowering with products for each year.

Promoting Your Content

Once you’ve created a good piece of viral content, your work is not done.  It’s crucial that you use social networks like Facebook and Twitter to spread the word about your content, as well as social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon Reddit, Digg and others.

1 comment

  • Down Or Just Me

    Totally agree with you on the images, here. I am much more likely to read an article that has a funny or interesting picture at the top that grabs my attention – it’s sad, but true!

    ~Laurie

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