Creating Viral Content

Summary

The content discusses the elusive nature of creating viral content, debunking common advice as cliché, and suggesting that virality is often unpredictable and not solely the result of following a set formula.

Abstract

The article "Creating Viral Content" critiques the plethora of online advice that claims to hold the secret to virality, dismissing it as repetitive and unoriginal. It suggests that while there are conventional tips for improving writing, such as knowing your audience and promoting your work, virality often hinges on more than just these steps. The author, Edward Thomas, humorously outlines a "step-by-step virality guide" that includes writing about a compelling topic, publishing, and then engaging in hopeful rituals, acknowledging the unpredictability of viral success. Reflecting on personal experience, the author notes that during the blogging boom of the early 2000s, content created with high expectations sometimes failed to perform, while offhand articles unexpectedly gained significant traction.

Opinions

The author views common advice on creating viral content as overly simplistic and ineffective.
There is a skeptical view of the effectiveness of Creative Writing 101 tips in achieving virality.
The article implies that virality may be more about luck and timing than following a prescribed set of rules.
The author's personal experience suggests that the content created with less effort can sometimes be more successful than that created with great expectations.
The satirical guide provided for achieving virality underscores the unpredictable and somewhat random nature of what content goes viral.

Technique or just luck?

There is no shortage of online articles and videos with headlines that promise to guide you along the path to virality. Unfortunately, all of them (at least all of the ones I have read) end up being nothing more than a hackneyed mess of lukewarm Creative Writing 101 pap.

Know your audience

Write for yourself

Check your spelling and grammar

Write a compelling headline

Keep sentences short and simple

Eliminate unnecessary words

Promote your writing

Buy a book

Take a course

Yada, yada, yada

Are there specific things you can do to produce prose so compelling it will induce thousands or even millions of netizens into a mad reading frenzy?

Step-by-step virality Guide

Here, absolutely free, is a step-by-step way to content virality. However, this method works only if you faithfully perform each of the five steps as required.

Select a compelling topic.

To the best of your ability, write an article about the topic.

Publish your article.

Hope, pray, light a candle, build a shrine, burn some incense, keep your fingers crossed, sacrifice a chicken, and do whatever else you think will work.

If your article does not go viral after a reasonable amount of time, repeat steps 1 through 4 above. Keep repeating all five steps as many times as required until virality is attained.

Epilogue: My Experience as a Blogger

Back in the early 2000s, when blogging was all the rage, I was lucky enough to have run a relatively successful blog. (By “relatively successful,” I mean according to my own puny metrics. Within the greater scheme of the Worldwide Web, it was hardly a drop in the bucket.)

That experience taught me valuable lessons about virality and targeting it when creating content.

What became apparent to me after some time was that articles we wrote with great expectations of high click numbers seldom lived up to expectations. Conversely, nothing pieces blasted out in a few minutes or stuck in just to fill space often took off and set new records on our humble website.

That was the case more often than not.