Once you’ve got your content written, it’s only natural that you want an audience of more than a few viewing it and sharing it. Going viral is a trend that every content producer wants to be a part of. After all, you’ve taken the time and effort to research and share your views on a topic, be in through a video, blog post, whitepaper, etc. So, is there is a secret to success when it comes to gaining viral status? Is there any one thing you simply must do? The truth is that there is no hard and fast rule, nor is there any guarantee that if you do follow in the footsteps of a particularly successful campaign that went viral, you will achieve the same result. But, there most certainly are some things to keep in mind, and follow, in order to give your content a shot at going viral.

Three Tips for Viral Success

• Relevancy of the Content: Interesting content that addresses consumer pain points and creating content for your target audience is essential for success. 
• Make the content shareable: Share-worthy content is the best way to spread your word to the greatest number of people. Make your content easy to share on social media and propagate it across multiple channels to reach a wide audience. 
• Be eye-catching: A catchy title, attractive images and at times, a controversial topic can all help your content attain viral status.

Who is the audience?
Having content that is valuable, on-topic, interesting and which speaks to the intended consumer’s pain points, is a must. Take the time to think about your key influencers and keep them in mind when creating content. Create content for your target audience and write/visualize rich, highly useful and relevant content.

Social sharing
Your readers/viewers will be eager to share the great content they found with their friends and followers.  To that end, make the social sharing buttons easily visible on the content, so people can share it as they are reading it – before the immediate enthusiasm and eagerness to share dies down. In an age when we all have followers of our own, sharing on social media is a given, and a quick and easy shout-out to followers.

Widen the net
Another way to propagate your content is to share it in a variety of places -different people come looking for content in different spots like forums, blogs and certain known websites. Slideshare is a great example of a spot where company products and solutions, industry specific research and trends can be found.

Build artificial links
Always link back to your original blog or site of posting when you share content. In fact, when you participate in a forum or post a comment in a group and have relevant content of your own on the subject, a great way to spread the word is to share the original link – by building such artificial links you gain more hits. The more places you share, the more attention you’ll to generate for your post.

Share with SMEs
Another mode of reaching out is by sharing your content and link with industry influencers or content publishers who deal with the subject matter you’ve written on – such a practice of linker outreach will get you the kind of audience who is genuinely interested in your content, and is more likely to comment and start a conversation around it.

Grab attention
Controversial content spreads like the proverbial wildfire. So, if you’re writing on a topic that’s controversial or else putting forth a point of view or idea that will cause controversy, you are likely to go viral. Of course, this doesn’t mean writing just to be controversial, but having a valid point to share.

Optimize your content
A simple way to generate traffic to your content is to have a great title that is compelling and on-topic; people will click on a link when something catches their eye, so keyword optimize your post’s title. In fact, as a rule, optimize your content for Google search so it doesn’t disappear but gets traffic over time. Also, know that longer posts get shared more and also have more weightage with search engines.

Be visually savvy
Another way to add some fuel to the flames is by the clever use of images. Graphics, photographs and pictures alongside the main points make your content attractive and memorable. Consider creating a short infographic which summarizes your key takeaway or the main message of your post, and embed it in the page. 

However relevant and well written the content, its only through sharing and optimizing that you can achieve mass following, and go viral.