What's the big deal with content becoming viral I hear you sneering under your breath… ? Well, let's say you have a particularly original advert for your business. Instead of paying thousands of Rand to have it aired on TV or radio, you send it to some of your friends saying they should have a look at it and they find it so funny they pass it on to their friends who pass it on to theirs. A couple of them might Tweet the video, some might post it onto their Facebook profiles and some might even submit it to Stumbleupon or Digg (Link to the relevant blog post). The result is that hundreds and sometimes even thousands of people have seen something which will either promote your business (if it was an advert) or gain yourself a bit of exposure if you are looking for personal branding.
This type of exposure is invaluable and costs very little when you compare it to traditional forms of advertising – and not only do people get to see the content but they can comment on it too which results in user-generated content, which on its own can become viral.
I do need to stress again that not all content has the potential to go viral, but if you are creating content with the possibility of it going viral in mind, then you increase your chances. Here are a few examples of content which has gone viral:
- This clip taken at a wedding had over 10 million views in just 7 days. The people who owned the rights to the song on the clip saw its rising popularity and had things put in place that would make buying the song easy, rocketing the year old song (at that stage) back up to number 4 on the iTunes Singles Charts and number 3 on the" Amazon Best Selling" list
- Heineken is known for their funny adverts – this one has over 350 000 views and the comments keep flowing in.
- Starbucks is also no new kid on the block when it comes to viral clips, this one is a particularly inspirational one which not only promotes the brand but a specific campaign.
