"Going Viral" in Social Media

Last summer, nearly all celebrities in town dumped buckets of ice over their heads and we followed suit.

09:44 01 October 2015

Watching amateurish footage of people having fun experiencing little discomfort became  a compelling form of  entertainment all of a sudden, and the Ice Bucket Challenge turned out to be one of the most shared and viral campaigns in social media history.

 

However, no one saw it coming and it rubbed salts in the wounds of different businesses and organisations that allot a lot of resources to creating that kind of effect on Twitter and Facebook. And, it’s easy to see why: an average social media user spends 1.72 hours every day on an average looking to be entertained. 

 

But the factors that determine which stuff gain traction online and which don’t are  difficult to pin down, and while a lot of guides and how-to articles have been written about getting successful at viral marketing, it’s more often down to certain factors beyond anybody’s control. 

 

Experts say that you cannot set up accounts in social media with the hope that every tweet or post is going to accomplish viral resonance. Truth be told, social media is about perseverance, about establishing a deep connect with your audience and building those relationships. It isn’t Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook- it’s all about people.  

 

Several companies have had a hard time getting into the role of a media publisher. While they don’t have enough resources with content creation skills, some businesses think they can simply farm out the job. The best way for a business to have a deep dialogue with its audience is to use people who breathe and live that brand to create compelling stories that result in emotional arousal.  Finally, companies need to appreciate the fact that the act of passing down the links or sharing some content online is all about those people reflecting an avatar of who they’d like to be. It’s all about self-expressing. 

 

Social media campaigns that are designed to go viral often bite the dust. When much of the content shared online is disposable, staying on top of someone’s feed is quite tricky. Social needs to be just a factor of a big marketing campaign that is focused on multiple channels to achieve the best results.