Getting your website content to go viral is both a matter of producing content geared to the viral space as well as proper planning.
Develop the Core Concept
The core idea that you create behind your viral campaign should be something that is completely unique, or it can be a twist on an extremely popular idea. It helps to know your audience well to come up with these ideas.
Knowing the Viral Space
Things that are really shocking, funny, interesting or unique can readily go viral; also, things that are geek-funny can do very well on Reddit and Digg. If you don’t regularly visit sites like Reddit, Digg and StumbleUpon, start doing so right away. It’s the only way you will truly understand what your audience is looking for.
Twitter and YouTube are 2 popular sites you should also master, because the potential to go viral on them is huge.
Planning Your Distribution
Before you create your content, plan where you want to distribute it. Are you going to put it on StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit or YouTube? There are specific tactics you can employ with each strategy to try to get more exposure. For example, StumbleUpon’s paid stumble system works quite well, while Reddit’s still needs some work.
On some systems, buying a high reputation account from which to post your content can dramatically increase your chances of ranking.
Creating Your Content
Putting a lot of time, energy and attention into the actual content piece is more important than anything else, including strategy planning. If possible, try to create your content in such a way that there can be a second part. That way you can easily piggyback off a successful campaign.
Try not to brand your first run. Don’t put your logo on your info graphics, and don’t put your brand in your YouTube videos. Instead, go back and add them later. Self-promotion is very much frowned upon in social bookmarking communities.
Launching Your Campaign
Launch your viral campaign and keep a very close eye on it. A lot of opportunities can float by if you are not keeping tabs on it. Anytime someone links to you, send them a thank you note. Start to build a relationship with them. Don’t get just that one link from them; it can easily turn into many more links.
Watch your server closely. If you hit the front page of Reddit or Digg, you can literally receive over one hundred thousand hits in a few hours, which can easily crash shared hosting, VPS hosting and even dedicated servers.
If you watch your launch carefully and maximize your returns while minimizing problems, you stand a good chance of going viral provided that you have good content, such as articles, ebooks, videos and more.
FURTHER READING
Please visit the Viral Marketing Spotlight for more information.
