If you follow the method I’m going to describe below, I can almost guarantee that your content will go viral. I’ve personally had many pieces of content I’ve posted on my Facebook page Pellau Magazine go viral reaching hundreds of thousands of individuals (notice I said hundreds of thousands and not millions).
Let’s define what we mean by “viral” first.
Obviously, if any content is viewed, shared, liked by over a million people then we can all agree that it has gone viral! However, there is another version of viral which is unique to you and your market. Here in Trinidad and Tobago, with a population of only about a million people and only about 400,000 of them active on social media, having any content reach over a million Trinidadians is probably impossible; the math just doesn’t support it! So you need to define what is viral to you. Let’s define it as any piece of content which gets 10 times the amount of likes or shares than your other content. This means if normally you can expect 20 likes and you get 200 then that content has gone “viral to you”. Over time this number can increase until you reach the maximum amount your niche or market would allow.
So how do we get our content to go viral?
It begins with posting and posting often! Create or share something new as often as possible for the platform you are using. On Instagram, this may mean once or twice daily, for TikTok this could mean several times daily. Its basically the law of averages here. The more potential content that is available to go viral the more likely one will. Of course, it actually is a little more complicated than that but it’s a place to start. For now just create, post, measure. Get an idea of that baseline.
What to post?
When creating the amount of content I described above, it’s going to be better to focus your content around a specific topic. Yes, you may want to experiment with various topics but when you find that topic or two that you can become the best at then eventually people will begin to seek you out! Also, we don’t want for content to go viral but when people begin visiting your page or account they get confused or turned off and don’t follow you. Something to note here however is you may lose some followers at first. Your friends and family may not even be the demographic you wanted in the first place so don’t feel bad. Embrace it and focus on those who will engage with your content.
What about measuring?
There is a sort of science behind going viral. You need to understand and maybe even predict what your followers will engage with. You can do this by monitoring trends. They may like a certain format or maybe a particular topic. You’ll know based on keeping track of what they engage with. Once you see the trend, experiment with posting more of that type of content. If you notice more likes, shares etc. then post more of that. With time you’ll start seeing more and more content going viral.