If you’re hoping for your latest content to go viral, it has to do one thing: evoke strong emotion. Key word there is “strong”. If someone lightly laughs at something, or is slightly inspired, that doesn’t make them jump to the “share” button. It has to be to the level of awesome. Awesomely funny, upsetting, uplifting, offensive, whatever the emotion is–it has to hit it hard. P&G’s Olympics ad is doing that–to the tune of 5.4 million views. Your latest blog post on why you like your company’s product isn’t doing that.
If you hit one or more of those emotions, that’s when the spread starts. The key to long-lasting viral is to reach the Third Circle.
In the middle is you or your brand. When you push out content, it always hits a good percentage of your First Circle. That’s your brand fans on Facebook, your followers on Twitter, the creepy people still on MySpace. It can also be personal friends and family. A percentage of those in the First Circle will always share your stuff for a multitude of reasons. They know you, so there is more reason to find an inside joke funny, they think you’re attractive (that’s a hot logo you got there!) so they always “Like” whatever you share. That means your content can always easily reach the Second Circle. It’s getting the content to spread past that circle that is the difference between viral and spiral.
That Second Circle have little to no brand attachment or relationship to you. They will spread the content based on its own content merits. Once they start sharing it with no brand umbilical cord attached, you know you’ve got a good one on your hands.
