Content Development and Marketing Strategy
Here’s What I Learned by Reviewing 100+ Viral Articles in 2021
I introduce distinctive patterns of viral content gaining mass attraction, increasing your chance in 2022.
2023 Update
Medium made some changes to the distribution system, so I covered them in a new article. After finishing this story, you may check this new one to adjust your strategy.
Why Viral Content Is Important for Creators
There is no guarantee in life. Like anything in the universe, viral content has a significant luck factor.
However, we can considerably increase providence when we look at it from a scientific perspective, especially using the concepts from quantum technology.
As this is a proven phenomenon, I choose not to go into scientific details. Instead, I share a few practical tips that any content developer can use to improve the chance of going viral based on the scientific method.
My definition of viral content is receiving over 100,000 or more views and substantial reading times like over a thousand hours.
Creating such capability is not rocket science but requires a lot of effort and coordinated investment in developing, designing, distributing, and marketing content strategically and tactically.
Gaining content visibility for freelance writers, bloggers, authors, podcasters, and YouTubers is a huge desire.
Viral content gives significant pleasure to creators. Not just my own content but also seeing viral articles in my publications from other writers exhilarates me and makes me feel euphoric.
For example, even though I enjoyed my content gaining visibility, being informed by the writings of other writers recognized on content platforms, especially beginners, gives me a unique pleasure.
Beginners may wonder why viral content matters. Viral content brings many benefits to content developers. The top five advantages are to:
1 — Gain new readers
2 — Build a rock-solid audience
3 — Prove your expertise for potential clients
4 — Gain significant traffic to your writing platforms
5 — Earn lucrative passive income
Some readers might argue with this point, but from my observations and interactions, I am yet to see a better factor delighting content developers more than experiencing viral materials in their portfolios. It is because of these tangible benefits and several other intangible outcomes.
Undoubtedly, luck plays a critical role in the visibility of content. However, there is significant evidence of common patterns in viral articles based on my observations, interactions, and personal experience. Articles, books, blog posts, newsletters, podcasts, and videos can go viral when matching specific criteria and virality patterns.
I share eight simple patterns that I observed after reviewing more than 100 viral articles on several content development and social media platforms in this post.
In addition, I watched and interacted with bloggers and writers in my social circles who consistently create viral stories such as at least once a month. Finally, to triangulate my findings, I also approached these successful content developers and validated these patterns with them.
I captured eight patterns by reviewing more than 100 pieces of content that went viral in 2021.
To keep this article in a reasonable size, I only focus on critical points. For details, I attached a few pieces which can elaborate on these at the end of this article for interested readers.
1 — Controversial and Emotional Content and Style
Even though controversial content is known for virality, I also noticed that the emotional style and tone of the writer, blogger, podcaster, or vlogger make a significant impact on content going viral.
For example, the confidence of the author can attract readers. Readers get hooked when they detect a confident voice, intriguing style, and well-narrated, credible content. This is how virality starts and manifests.
Emotions play the most critical role in a piece of content going viral. If your content has no feelings, the likelihood of its mass visibility is very poor. Not necessarily good emotions. Negative emotions also trigger people to read. For example, anger, hatred, frustration, sadness, and grief might attract the attention of many readers.
The storytelling style evoking emotions is a well-recognized pattern. Even scientific or flat content can be turned into a sentiment-provoking story. By the way, thanks to artificial intelligence, now search engines can perform sentiment analysis while distributing content to the desired audience. Many reputable writers also practice and leverage this essential principle.
2 — Unique Titles and Subtitles
This sounds very simple, but I have seen so many beautifully narrated pieces written rigorously. However, their titles and subtitles do not entice the reader. Instead, they look bland and even meaningless. I have seen titles almost as long as a paragraph.
From my experience, any content with more than 200 characters in the title and subtitle do not perform well from visibility and findability perspectives. I also observed this situation in the range I analyzed. Most blog posts, articles, and books have a concise title and subtitle, usually around three to five keywords.
The title attracts the attention as the first dart, and the subtitle explains to the reader what the writer wants to talk about as a second dart. This simple approach can make a dramatic impact in creating viral content. So my critical point is never to underestimate the power of titles and subtitles in your content. And clickbait is not sustainable and might have a boomerang effect.
I personally don’t like creating clickbait because of my empathy and care for my readers. Some of my articles or blogs might sound clickbait, but I always deliver what I promise in my title and subtitle.
3 — Designed Content for SEO
SEO does not mean cheating search engine algorithms. In fact, those who attempt them can experience adverse side effects overtly. However, recent search algorithms are much cleverer than humans and can easily detect these types of contrived behavior.
The fundamental purpose of SEO is writing our content in a way that computers can understand and recommend to valued readers. SEO is both an art and a science. There are some misleading suggestions, such as frequently using some keywords. If keywords are not relevant to the context, I don’t think this recommendation would work.
I used to use too many scientific words in my articles. Some were not even in dictionaries. In hindsight, I noticed that they were problematic. Translating those terms to publicly understandable phrases has significantly improved my content’s visibility, findability, and readability. I also observed this in viral content that I analyzed in detail.
Frankly, I haven’t come across content written in purely scientific terms on viral sites. Of course, there might be exceptions, such as Noble Prize-winning pieces, but simply narrated scientific works generally have more chance of going viral.
4 — References to Popular People and Places
I noticed that some viral stories include names of famous people like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Jack Ma, and many other celebrities. It is the same for famous locations. This tactic plays a better role, especially when these names are mentioned in the title or subtitle.
For example, a story about Elon Musk published in one of my publications received over 420,000 views and more than 3000 hours of reading time on this platform. It was written in straightforward language with keywords skillfully designed by the author.
This approach does not guarantee as I have seen many stories with names of famous people that performed poorly. If all the other points I mentioned match, using references to famous people can significantly increase the chance of virality, especially on social media.
5 — Unusual and Appealing Images
Content developers underestimate the power of images on blog posts, articles, videos, books, and even podcasts. Images create emotions for the consumer.
Some images can create an instant connection with readers. If the title of the content relates to the photos or pictures, it can attract the reader’s attention using both sides of the brain for instant decision-making.
As mentioned before, emotions play an essential role in a piece of content going viral. From my experience, simply, no feelings, no virality! However, logic is also important to supplement emotions. So, appealing to both emotional and logical parts of the brain for readers can create better results.
6 — Breathtaking Opening and Conclusion
Most readers usually read the first and the last paragraph of an article, a blog, or a book. If it is written to attract the reader’s attention, the content can be a winner.
If the first paragraph is dull and cannot connect with the target audience, even if the rest of the content is well-designed and have important messages, readers usually give up, and sometimes they never get back to this blogger or writer. You can be black-listed metaphorically and lose your chance.
This also applies to podcasts and videos. The first minute is enough for the audience to listen to or watch a media piece.
7 — Appearance and Readability of Content
We may underestimate the formatting, but it plays a role in attracting readers and viewers as much as the quality of content. Unfortunately, some creators neglect this aspect, believing that quality content can always win. It is partially true from my experience. Therefore, reputable publishers pay particular focus to format.
Readers don’t like the cumbersome and cluttered format of any type of content. The style needs to appeal to the eyes of the readers to choose a piece of content. Eye-catching formatting can have a subconscious effect on decision-making.
Most of the viral pieces I reviewed depicted a unique form of appearance. For example, short sentences and paragraphs are good examples of attractive content appearance for consumers. They were around grade 7 level, according to the Hemingway Editor.
8 — Social Media Boost
Sharing with an emotional stimulus can have massive potential for content to go viral on social media. I don’t mean sharing in media by the content developer but by the content consumer. Even though initial sharing by the owner of the content is essential for creating visibility, what truly matters is sharing by the readers for credibility and trust of potential readers.
Some social media tools are more powerful than others. As I mentioned in this article, some of these tools and platforms gain millions of views. Search engine and platform algorithms distribute content getting signals from many readers in a specific period.
So, the more engagement signals a piece of content brings in a short time, the faster they are shown to new readers. Therefore, search engines and writing platforms always prioritize fresh content. However, valuable aged content has the potential to go viral. For example, one of my articles went viral after six months of publishing it.
For example, YouTube is a remarkable tool for creating visibility. Using YouTube might be difficult for many content developers. It requires a lot of effort. However, creating Vlogs is not too difficult. An enticing two-minute talk recorded by a smartphone about a blog post or an article can generate unusual traffic and create serendipity.
I observed many bloggers use vlogs successfully to get their content found and visible to consumers. I even noticed very reputable content developers record their voices while driving a car or walking in a park.
However, the quality of those vlogs can be relatively lower than designed videos with rigorous editing. Besides, some readers love raw video and audio content conveying key messages with action points, providing more information, and inviting the viewers or listeners to check their blog posts attached to the video.
Conclusions
Even though the occurrence of viral content seems chaotic from the outset, they have observable behavior and patterns. I see creating viral stories as well-organized energy. Manifestation in our life requires the order of energies. Chaotic energy does not mean much for manifestation as a universal principle.
However, the order might be very complex and ambiguous. Therefore, learning about content flow patterns and behavior in search engines and platforms is essential.
We cannot guarantee to create viral content at all times. But imagine, you can get one in a month or even every three to six months. I learned that some viral stories or blog posts on content platforms paid the mortgage of the creator. You can read many examples on social media.
If you are interested in gaining new readers, building a rock-solid audience, proving your expertise for potential clients, gaining significant traffic to your writing platforms, and, more importantly, earning lucrative passive income, it is worth the effort to invest your time in creating viral stories. It takes time and practice.
It is not too late if you didn’t get any viral content in 2021. Keeping optimism and investing time and energy in a systematic approach can bring the joy of tasting viral content.
2022 Update
2023 Update
Medium now has a new distribution approach called BOOSTING. If you want to learn more about it, I documented my initial findings, perspectives, and personal experiences in an article presenting it in a checklist format for new writers.
New Writers: Enhance the Chance of Boosting via This Quality Checklist
Before penning this piece, I thought about what value I could add to my readers in the content strategy topic. I couldn’t find a better idea than this article’s topic due to its significance for content developers. So, my goal is to make this post a New Year’s present for my readers. I wish you a festive season and hope your content gains significant visibility in 2022.
Thank you for reading my observations and perspectives.
Previous Articles about Writing Viral Content
Supplemental References
Subscribers Can Produce 50 Times Better Results Than Followers for Freelance Writers
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Science-Based Therapeutic Value of Expressive Writing for Mental Health
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