The Secret To Viral Social Media Campaigns: Step-by-Step Guide

Every brand dreams of making its content viral and getting into the spotlight. However, learning how to create viral content requires strategy, timing, and an understanding of what makes people engaged. When executed right, viral social media campaigns can generate positive results that help enhance brand awareness, more organic traffic, and reputation. In this blog, we explain more about viral marketing and how to increase social media reach through this technique. 

Viral Marketing 101

What is viral marketing? This is a strategy to increase followers, organic traffic, and brand engagement by creating compelling content. The main objective of creating viral content is to encourage individuals to share it with their network and achieve exponential growth in visibility and engagement. So, why is it called viral? This is because the content resonates with the current phenomenon and spreads quickly from person to person, eventually reaching a vast audience with minimal effort and cost from the brand.

Due to the perks it offers, viral content marketing is one of the most effective social media hacks utilized in today’s digital marketing landscape. Most brands leverage viral marketing tactics and post it on their social media channels, where it is rapidly shared among the target audience. Since the content is seen by millions of people within hours, this makes it a truly powerful tool for brands and businesses seeking to get widespread recognition.

Viral Marketing Tactics: How Does It Work

Learning what viral marketing is one thing, understanding how it works is another important aspect. Creating a viral social media marketing strategy begins with creating content based on the currently popular trend and publishing it on your social media channel. Once it starts appearing on your target audience’s feed, they start engaging with it by liking, commenting and sharing. 

How to increase social media reach through this strategy? As more people share and become aware of the content through word of mouth, this creates a chain of referrals where your brand gets maximum exposure and eventually, your content becomes viral. Compared to traditional marketing, viral marketing is much more cost-effective. The following image shows how the whole viral marketing social media hacks from start to end.

Source: Sociallyin

Advantages Of A Viral Social Media Marketing Strategy

Before you embark on implementing the best viral marketing tactics, knowing the perks offered is important. Let’s dive into that:

Wider Reach 

This has to be the biggest advantage of creating viral content. Once it becomes highly popular among customers, they share it, which can reach a wider audience globally in a matter of hours. 

Cost-Effectiveness

Unlike other marketing methods, viral marketing tactics require minimal cost and resources as investment. Instead, it relies on organic sharing, word of mouth and the popularity of the trend. All these factors make it a highly cost-effective way to build a loyal customer base.

Customer Engagement

Still figuring out how to increase social media reach? Focus on customer engagement. Viral content engages with customers at a much higher frequency than other content. This makes them follow your brand for more such content types and eventually become loyal brand advocates. 

Brand Awareness

Viral content generates significant buzz; no doubt of that. This buzz leads to increasing brand visibility and recognition. Even customers who aren’t following you will know about your brand through the content being shared.

How to Create Viral Content successfully

After studying the various viral marketing advantages, you must be thrilled to create stunning content that will captivate audiences, right? But you have to first know where to start. The following tips for viral social media posts shown below should take care of that. 

Know Your People Clearly

If you want to learn how to create viral content, it has to hit the right target audience. Understand who your audience is, what they are searching for, what makes them engaged, etc. Getting the basics right gives the best result for your content.

Time it right

If you are planning on how to go viral on social media, pay attention to timing. This critical factor makes or breaks the viral factor of your content. It is always better to plan and execute just immediately after the current event has become a trend. Since this period is often the time customers interact and engage more with the trend, timing your campaign right can transform your PPC campaign and generate maximum results.

Bring In Some Emotions

One of the reasons why content becomes viral is the emotion it elicits from the users. This can range from joy to anger, laughter, nostalgia, shock, etc. People feel something when viewing such content. So, you have to bring in a personal touch to your content so that it becomes relatable and unique.

Try to keep it simple

Life is short, and so is the attention of users. Therefore, when deciding on how to create viral content, make it short, engaging and crystal clear. Sometimes, all you need is something short and catchy to go viral.

Add Your Twist To The Trends

Even though you create viral content based on trending subjects, don’t just ditto it. Add your unique brand message to make it stand out. You can make it funny, inspiring, or anything that makes it different.

Partner with Influencers

Think of social media influencers as the vessel that amplifies your viral content to new heights. Partnering with the right people who connect well with your target audience is a great way to create viral content.

Know The Inevitable Challenges

Viral trends in digital marketing have their perks, but there are challenges also, which you must be aware of and make necessary plans accordingly. Let’s dive into these and understand more about them.

Unpredictability

No matter how to go viral on social media, there is no guarantee that your well-designed campaign will go viral. The process is inherently unpredictable and relies on factors beyond the brand’s control.

Despite having good intentions and hopes of creating viral content, there isn’t any guarantee that it will go viral. It all depends on how the audience perceives it and connects with their life, which is something beyond your control, which brings us to…

Loss of Control

Continuing from the above point, once you publish content, you have little control over how it is shared or interpreted by your target audiences. Sometimes, certain users can alter the content, which leads to serious consequences.

Negative Backlash

In certain scenarios, when your viral content gets misinterpreted or offends some users, this can result in a backlash that affects brand reputation. This is not something brands want to have, but it can happen.

Shorter Lifespan

Viral contents are often created in the spur of the current trend happening in the digital world. When the trend gets replaced by a new one, this affects your content also. Therefore, maintaining the initial momentum to long-term results can be challenging. 

Winding Up

Viral marketing is indeed a good way to expand your brand presence and effectively engage with audiences. Despite the challenges it poses, the results delivered by this digital marketing campaign are always on the positive side, making this a highly rewarding activity. 

To start making viral content, you should start by following the above tips for viral social media posts. This involves understanding your target audience, crafting compelling content and leveraging the right platforms. If done correctly, brands can cost-effectively achieve tremendous results. If you are looking to create viral content or the best-crafted digital marketing strategies to make your brand successful, reach out to GTECH, your reliable and trusted ppc agency in UAE, where we implement innovative strategies that enhance your brand presence with ease.