Main keyword: Viral Content
Related keywords: Social Media – Sharing – Website Traffic – Views – SEO – Newsworthiness
Summary: Going viral is the dream of any content creator. The exponential number of views and engagement that a piece of content can receive after going viral is very attractive to business owners and content creators. Although it may look like there’s no logic behind it and content goes viral by chance, there is quite a bit of psychology behind the process and reasoning behind it.
Understanding How Content Goes Viral
What makes content go viral? What’s the psychology behind it? Why do we want viral content for our campaigns? Research shows that viral content typically has the ability to trigger specific emotional responses in people. Interestingly, these emotional responses that lead to massive shares are dominance and arousal. Arousal is the range of emotional experiences from excitement to boredom; anger for example, is a high arousal emotion. Dominance defines how much control you have over your emotion; fear is a low dominance emotion because you don’t have much control over it.
Content that generates positive emotions such as happiness, love, empathy and admiration is much more likely to go viral. This is where you need to tap in to the highly dominant positive emotions. However, negative content also has the potential to go viral if implemented correctly. This is where you need to trigger high-arousal emotions such as anger or disgust to get people to share your content.
Psychology of Sharing
The key to a content going viral is eliciting an emotional response, whether that emotion is positive or even negative. The more intense that emotional response is, the greater traffic you will get. These responses are also usually contagious. A recent study found that when people posted status updates on social media, their friends in other places who saw the posts were most likely to post similar ones. People tend to share things they have strong emotional reactions to, especially if these are positive emotions.
Social media has become a way of emotional release for a lot of people. They use these platforms to process emotions they are feeling by sharing posts with their friends. Research also shows that people are most likely to share content if they are physiologically aroused; for instance, after finishing a workout. Another important factor behind sharing is what the post can do for a person’s status. This means someone might share an article to twitter without even reading it if the action implies a sense of increased status.
An important motivation behind a lot of human behavior is our pack animal psychology. As pack animals, we’re constantly thinking about how we’re perceived, our status and where we fit in our society. We want to be able to show who we are and be vindicated in our identity while simultaneously being accepted in society.
Studies have found that the top five reasons people tend to share content is bettering the lives of others, reflecting their online identity, growing and nourishing relationships, enjoying the feeling of having others engage and spreading the word about certain topics.
Reasons Behind Sharing
Newsworthiness is one of the most important reasons behind the virality of many posts. If your content supports or complements a newsworthy story it has a much higher chance of going viral. Study the trends of what people are talking about and what is interesting the general public at the moment and tailor your content around that subject.
We are compelled to share things that we find useful because we want to be perceived at helpful to our society. For instance, a new product that we feel is really good or provides good value. Fear is also a very good motivator when it comes to sharing. News media uses this tactic a lot with over exaggerating headlines designed to provoke these types of emotions in their readers in order to get them to share the article. Products that offer safety and security are shared because of this same motivator. Many apps, products and services have used this deep-seated emotion in order to promote their business and it has worked very well for them.
The attraction of novelty to the human brain has been researched quite extensively. However, we are also cautious creatures and sometimes tend to prefer familiarity. The sweet spot here is right in the middle; something that is new enough to not be stale but not too new to be scary and strange. We are always looking for the next new thing and are motivated to share new products and information because it is interesting to us and also because of how it makes us look in the eyes of people around us.
Validation is a very strong motivator and an important reason behind what we share. We want to believe we are smart, kind, good, and worthy and one of the most effective ways to achieve this is receiving validation from people around us. For example, people tend to share results of all sorts of online personality quizzes because they seek that validation. Sharing an article or a post that resonates with what you believe in and stand for can also have the same effect. You want to know what people think of you, and sharing posts that drive people to think of you in a way that you want them to can make you feel good about who you are.
Vicarious enjoyment is also one of the big motivators. People share things that allows them to vicariously experience and live through them. People can also express their envy or dislike through sharing celebrity gossips or scandals and this sense of unity through common disdain makes them feel accepted and understood.
Although psychology does play a huge part in the virality of content, technology and how you take advantage of its potential also plays a big role. SEO is an integral part of getting your content to your audience. You need to craft an effective content strategy, starting with choosing your keywords. You should try to understand how your specific audience would search on google, what words they would use, and how you can reach them. People want to see corresponding information pertaining to the keywords that they have entered in the search engine. There is a plethora of tools and programs you can utilize to craft these keywords and your content in order to drive the most organic traffic to your website as possible.
Next you need to figure out the intent of your audience. Find out what information they want and be sure to include it in your content. The more useful and easier to read and understand your content is, the more chance you have of retaining this traffic. Articles that are backed up by data and statistics also have a much higher chance of being shared. This brings credibility to your content and the more people trust your content the more likely they are to share it. Including images, charts, infographics and other types of visuals can also help you get shares.
Takeaway
There are a number of reasons behind how well your content does and how you can get your audience to share it in the hopes of it eventually going viral. However, you need to analyze your business and audience and figure out how you can use these tips to be able to tailor your content in a way to increase your chances of going viral.
