Hot or Not? Why Some Things Go Viral on Social Media.

1. Why does media spread?

      Virality on social media is an interesting topic and a difficult thing to achieve. What is it that make articles/videos/photos spreadable? Why does certain media reach that point of virality while other media doesn’t? While doing a project for The Foundation for a Better Life last semester we came up with these ideas:

HOW TO MAKE SOMETHING GO VIRAL:

One of the most important factors when trying to make something go viral is headline. Your headline has to have some type of curiousity gap that makes the reader or watcher interested to keep tuning in. Don’t give it all away in the headline. You must frame everything: the share image, the share text, the excerpt, and the headline. You have to be careful in the way you choose to word something. For example, the same story was shared with two different headlines and had totally different results. The video with the headline “Zach Walls Speaks About Family” reached 1 million views, while the same video with the headline “Two Lesbians Raised a Baby and This is What They Got” reached 17 million views. Frame things in a way that is interesting to the audience.

Talk about things that encourage desirable impressions. Making something go viral has nothing to do with the messenger, but with the message. Share original content. Everyone loves raw, human, honest moments. You can’t fake authenticity...people love and share it. Make sure your website shares properly to allow people to share from there. Use Google and Facebook analytics to see what people are interacting with the most. People share the most on Facebook. Even if you do it right on Twitter, you can only make a small dent. Optimize your content to be really clicky on Facebook.

The first ideas about having a catchy headline is SO important. This has been around since the beginning of media. Newspapers use this same technique—write a catchy headline that captures your readers attention so they keep reading. But it is so true! Here are a few examples I have seen recently on social media of catchy—even racy headlines that make you WANT to read/watch.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/02/divorce-story-_n_4509005.html

http://jarridwilson.com/why-im-getting-a-divorce-in-2014/

2.   How can media engagement be valuable?

When consumers feel like a company listens to them they are more willing to see them as a trustworthy source and as a valuable provider. In an article on clickz.com Shari Cleary VP of Viacom Entertainment Group gave this example concerning engagement:

 I asked Shari to bring it alive for the Pivotcon audience by giving us a real example of how fans engage today. She used Comedy Central's, "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" to illustrate how fans get engaged in advance of a show by tweeting about guests who have been announced, then chatting on Twitter and Facebook during the airing of segments on TV. They can also catch full episodes using the app the next morning when going to work on the train. They can post online or on Facebook platforms after the show. Plus, there are the traditional Nielsen ratings.

http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2302252/how-media-companies-are-learning-from-social-conversation-for-always-on-engagement

3.    What constitutes meaningful participation?

How do brands allow their consumers to become engaged in a meaningful way? Starbucks does a really great job of this! They have an incredible social media presence and fabulous brand loyalty because they have learned how to engage their consumers in a meaningful way.

Starbucks gave their keys to success in creating meaningful participation:

a.     It’s about relationships, not marketing.

                                               i.     April fools day

b.     Social media fits within a larger digital strategy

                                              

  http://www.starbucks.com/responsibility/community/starbucks-red#/cd   

c.      Make it clear where to start

d.     Look around the corners

e.     Be authentic

f.      Build coalitions

g.     If it doesn’t maktter on twitter, it doesn’t matter.

h.     Focus on the four responses.

i.       Take chances, but be mostly right.

j.       An economic meltdown is a terrible thing to waste.

4.  What is the most effective way to spread media?

The most effective way to spread media is to have valuable content. I have seen several videos floating around my Facebook that have valuable and significant content. If you don’t have significant content then you can try to intrigue people with clever titles, pictures, or summaries of what your content is about. But, for media to be truly successful it needs to have meaningful content: stories of the underdog, stories of heroism, unbelievable acts of kindness, stories that restore our faith in humanity. All of these types of stories get posted and shared because they strike some of our human emotion chord. Here are a few examples from the past few weeks:

http://damn.com/p/this-video-my-beautiful-woman-will-touch-your-heart-like-never-before-must-watch/

5.   Is humor simply a matter of taste or is it a vehicle?

Humor can definitely be a vehicle. When someone finds something funny online and they want to share it they always write something along the lines of ‘this is so funny, you have to watch it!’. That right there is a vehicle The humor is carrying it farther and enticing people to share it.

Target—has 178,683 likes and 29,000 shares. The humor is the vehicle.

This meme has 179,000 likes and 29,000 shares. Why are people sharing this? Because they can relate to it and because they think it is funny. Humor is the vehicle for this particular meme and many more like it. 

About four years ago this news story went viral on social media. Shortly there after there were spoofs and remixes of this news story and today almost any body would understand the phrase 'hide yo kids hide yo wife' and they would know the source of it. Why did this particular news story go viral? Because of the humor (although it was unintended humor) in it. People were sharing it like crazy saying how funny and how hilarious it was. Everybody was watching it! The humor was the vehicle. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8u4BiKGNP0

6. How is timely controversy a factor in spreading media?

If something is timely, and it is a new hot topic, people are more willing to learn more and inform others of it. They want to read the hot news and share it with all of their friends so they look like the one of the first people to make something go viral. New topics spread like wildfire across the media especially when they are controversial.

For instance, last week on the biggest loser finale the winner ended up weighing only 105 pounds! She had lots way more than 50% of her former self. Many people were questioning whether or not her methods were safe and whether or not her body weight was healthy enough. Stories about her went viral in a controversial social media battle about weight. Only a few days later articles starting being shared defending the biggest loser winner. This article spread because it was a hot controversial issue. With out the former story, this story would have gone no where, it would have had no context. It is completely dependant upon the hot controversial issue for its viral success.