How to make your article go viral

What is viral content you ask? It could be a YouTube video, a tweet, a FaceBook post or your next blog post. It’s any piece of content that goes popular, seemingly, overnight.

Viral content works for itself. Once you’ve created your post and set it free into the world wide web, people will start finding it. With the right recipe, the content can explode with people and channels, sharing your page worldwide.

Whether you’re looking to expose your brand or get 15 minutes of fame we’ve got some tips for you. There’s no trick for a 100% success rate, however, there are always some tricks out there that will help to grow your content rapidly!

Tips for making blog posts go viral

1. Allow people to look intelligent

Nobody wants to look stupid, right? People like to come across as smart. Sharing content is like social currency. If it benefits them and makes them look smart, they are far more likely to want to share it with their friends and followers.

It’s essential to get your headline and introduction right so that social media users can instantly understand what your blog article is all about, enticing them to click, and look just as intelligent as your for posting it (tip: look into using Open Graph and Twitter meta tags).

Neuroradiology Consulting provides content on their blog that is important to neuroradiologists. By offering such content, it ensures other people involved will neuroradiology will find useful information that is worth sharing with others.

2. Don’t make fun of others

As we know, people want to look clever. Sharing content puts their reputation on the line. Try to avoid targeting specific groups of people or discredit someone if that’s going to cause an adverse reaction or upset anyone.

3. Keep content to the point

Your content must be right to the point. A lot of viral content is short. Look at Vine, for example. The app was built on content going viral, giving users only 7-seconds to do so.

People have short attention spans, so content should be easily read. Make content that is easy to scan using a combination of subheadings and paragraphs, ensuring that whatever it is the user should be looking for, they’ll easily find it.

4. Write relatable content

Try to aim your articles towards subjects that are relatable to the reader. That could be by offering advice, answering common questions, helping somebody to learn something new.

Write content that speaks to the reader on a personal level and provides them with a personal benefit. Doing so, you increase your chances of them wanting to tell everyone they know. The more relatable the content, the more chances are people will continue to share.

5. Make your content genuine

Original content will perform a lot better. Content that has already been done thousands of times before or topics that are of common knowledge won’t be as successful as an article offering new or improved information.

Create information that will capture the user’s attention and leave them feeling like they’ve gotten something back by spending their team reading it.

6. Use lists

Let’s start with a mention to Buzzfeed, the number one place for all things viral lists. Everyone at some point in time has found themselves endlessly looking through a Buzzfeed list.

People react well to lists, as they provide a simple format for offering information. A list can answer a lot of questions, are easy to scan and can tackle a lot of related topics all in one go.

Looking to write a list-style article? Check out these irresistible headline formulas by Sumo.

7. Add humour

It’s good to show a little bit of humour as opposed to coming across all serious. Adding a touch of fun to posts will help to reach your readers on a personal level.

It’s vital to get humour right and make sure you aren’t making jokes about something that could be wrongly perceived.

8. Use an intriguing headline

Your headline should seal the deal on catching a user’s attention. It’s vital that the headline tells the whole story; what will your user find out from your post?

Final thoughts

So now you know what helps make content go viral.

Sometimes it’s all down to luck, therefore, don’t be disheartened if every post from here on out doesn’t reach millions. However, using some of the tips offered in this post should help you to get the viral ball rolling.

If you’ve found these tips useful or had success by using them, let us know as we’d really like to know.