The Art of Creating Viral Content: What Marketers Should Know

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Introduction

Creating viral content is often perceived as an elusive art. Emotion is a significant factor in the success of viral campaigns, but what other secrets lie behind rapidly spreading posts? Is there a universal formula to make your content go viral?

Have you ever wondered why Mrs. Tan’s Vlog or TikTok trends like “Et Oh Et” attract millions of views, likes, and shares, while your carefully crafted photo of a homemade cake garners only a few likes from friends and family?

The difference can be partly attributed to the size of the audience, but more significantly, it lies in the viral effect itself. With the assistance of social media, viral content can effectively reach and expand its influence within the internet community. Understanding and applying viral content strategically is crucial for marketers aiming to build impressive and effective communication campaigns.

What is Viral Content?

Definition

Viral content emerged alongside the rise of social media platforms and has since acquired numerous definitions. However, it can generally be defined as content that is shared voluntarily from person to person over a short period, gaining significant public attention.

The rapid dissemination of this type of content typically begins on social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok. The hotter the content, the stronger its viral potential. Once it reaches a certain threshold of popularity, traditional media channels like newspapers and television also tap into and exploit viral content.

Benefits of Viral Content in Business Communication Strategies

With the continuous advancement of technology, many human activities such as learning, entertainment, and shopping are increasingly shifting to the digital space. Consequently, information flow is also becoming digitized.

This shift creates an ideal communication playground for businesses. Viral marketing is cost-effective yet yields quick results, allowing brands to achieve extensive reach and directly influence individuals.

Viral content, empowered by social media, becomes an ideal communication tool, helping brands make a lasting impression, expand their reach to potential customers, and enhance brand recognition at minimal costs.

Additionally, viral content is regarded as an effective marketing form due to its ability to disseminate messages easily from one individual to another across digital platforms. A simple “share” on Facebook can potentially lead to thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of reach.

For instance, a viral video from the women’s fashion brand “Lép,” in collaboration with youth news outlets, garnered over 3.5 million views on Facebook.

In a viral marketing campaign, a marketer’s primary task is to create suitable viral content that cleverly embeds the brand’s desired message and disseminates it to the public. The subsequent success largely relies on the engagement of social media users, which often results in lower costs for viral marketing compared to other media methods.

How to Make Content Go Viral

Time is limited for all of us, while numerous media channels compete for user attention. This competitive context creates a significant advantage for viral marketing.

For content to become “famous,” the fundamental requirement is that it must be unique. Such content is characterized by being impressive, distinctive, valuable, or conveying a meaningful message to social media users.

Determining the Format of Viral Content

As mentioned in the previous section, any content format can potentially go viral, but certain formats tend to be favored by viewers. These include highly visual content and longer text formats accompanied by images.

Highly Visual Content

Images, videos, infographics, etc., have a greater likelihood of capturing attention compared to pure text. This preference can be attributed to the engagement of multiple senses when consuming such content.

The combination of sound, visuals, and narrative in a viral video creates a more impactful experience for viewers. In this way, advertisers can effectively convey messages and emotions to the community.

For example, during the 2020 Mid-Autumn Festival, The Coffee House made a significant mark in the competitive F&B industry with a creative communication campaign titled “The Tale of Cuoi.”

By combining modern perspectives with traditional values, the content team retold the familiar folk story of Cuoi and Hằng in a unique way through an animated short film. Featuring impressive 3D effects and a fresh arrangement of the song “Thằng Cuội,” this viral video attracted significant attention from social media users, amassing a total of 9 million views across Facebook and YouTube.

Additionally, along with other promotional activities, “The Tale of Cuoi” contributed to a 250% increase in The Coffee House’s total revenue in 2020 compared to 2019.

Long Text Accompanied by Images

In an age where social media platforms increasingly prioritize short content, longer text formats might be perceived as less appealing. However, according to research by BuzzSumo, longer texts that provide useful or high-value content tend to be shared more frequently than shorter ones.

Along with engaging storytelling, many pieces of human-centric content have successfully gone viral in this format.

For instance, a travel experience shared by young traveler Trần Lê Ngọc Thắng on the Check-in Vietnam community, which has over 1.5 million followers, demonstrates that long-form content providing value to readers is well-received.

Emotion: The Key Ingredient for Successful Viral Content

Emotion is often seen as the deciding factor in the success of viral content. A survey conducted by the Wharton School of Business regarding email sharing habits and social media likes found that the emotional impact of content significantly influences its viral potential.

It’s no surprise that many viral content pieces today tap into natural, relatable themes or evoke strong emotions in the audience. However, from a behavioral psychology perspective, not all emotions elicit the same effects.

Strong emotions compel us to act. This is why feelings of joy, excitement, anger, or fear are more likely to be shared, and media often exploit these emotions for viral content campaigns.

Positive and Entertaining Emotions

In modern society, where pressures are constant, joy and positivity are emotions that most brands wish to associate with. A 2018 study by Fractl concluded that content with joyful and positive emotions is shared more frequently.

Particularly for brands targeting Generation Z, humorous and entertaining content is highly favored. In Vietnam, brands often collaborate with entertainment platforms that appeal to young audiences with fresh and humorous styles.

Conclusion

Creating viral content is not merely about luck; it involves a deep understanding of audience emotions, effective content formats, and strategic distribution methods. By leveraging these elements, marketers can enhance their chances of creating content that resonates with audiences and achieves viral success