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How To Make Something Go Viral On Social Media (NOT)

It’s 2015 and I still get asked that dreaded question posed to nearly every social media marketer. That question is, “Can you make this go viral?” My answer is always the same, “You can’t make something go viral any more than you can make a toddler eat spinach.” I always stress to think “shareable” instead of viral and to think long and hard about your goals. Ultimately, the thing to ponder is whether you are building an idea or campaign that people will share without prompting. Going viral is an almost hopeless aspiration, yet there are a few strategies marketers can consider to encourage the possibility.

Here are three questions to pose if you’re thinking you have that viral campaign. After you ask these, you may just think again.

  1. Is it about you or is it about them? If you want people to share your campaign, it cannot be about you. It has to be about them, the sharer. Think of the Ice Bucket Challenge. We all know that ALS had nothing to do with the origins of that campaign. What made that concept go viral was the fact that it was about the sharer. Crazy folks around the globe decided it would be funny to drop a bucket of ice on their head. The act became about their reaction to said ice and along the way ALS was occasionally mentioned.
  2. Is it memorable? Any thing you want to be shared on social media has to be easy to repeat, easy to remember, easy to spell. When the Everywhere Agency won the Guinness World Record for #BeatCancer, it was because those two words, Beat and Cancer, were easy to remember and words you could not forget or confuse. Clients often come to me with concepts that align with their marketing strategy, but unfortunately don’t have that easy, memorable, catchy hook. If there’s a chance it can get misconstrued, misspelled or misaligned, it likely will be.
  3. Is it inherently shareable? We all hopefully learned about sharing sometime after we emerged from the toddler period of existence… but think about what’s shareable in your life now. Funny ideas, gossip, and breaking news all fall under that category. Your brand manifesto or marketing campaign is not. Shareable is something you go out of your way to do and if your campaign does not have that easy click, send appeal of gossip, or a funny story, it won’t get shared.

There’s a video right now on YouTube, which is sponsored by the Card Store. It’s called #WorldsToughestJob and it features a dude interviewing potential job candidates for a job which requires candidates to be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The potential job candidates are incredulous and frankly so are we as we watch. Who could expect anyone to be available, on your feet, ready to respond to any demand of your employer 365 days of the year, 7 days a week. The denouement comes when the dry interviewer reveals that the job in question is being a mom. Spoiler alert – you’ll need to get out your handkerchief at that point. The video has been viewed over 23M times (at the writing of this blog post) and it isn’t until the last 16 seconds of this 4-minute video that the brand is even mentioned.

That’s what I call shareable, er, viral.

Cancer Research UK Tweet

Three Non-Profits Using Social Media in an “Out of the Box” Way

You’d have to have been living under a rock to have missed the ALS ice bucket challenge that’s swept the web. A few months before the ALS challenge, women were posting photos of their bare faces, free of make-up and hashtagging #NoMakeUpSelfie. Believe it or not, these efforts weren’t even planned by non-profits. But, with some strategic placement and interjections from groups like the ALS Association and Cancer Research UK, the results have been millions raised for both organizations. What follows are three non-profits using social media in “out of the box” ways that deserve notice. Or I should say, more notice.

 

1. WATERisLIFE

WATER is LIFE Logo

True hashtag hijackers, Water is Life mastered the idea of taking something with a negative reputation and turning it into something for a greater good. #FirstWorldProblems, a trending hashtag, highlights issues that – only those far more fortunate than others – could even deem ‘problems’. For instance, “My in-flight movie was longer than my flight” is a typical first world problem. Water for Life hijacked this hashtag and created a video featuring third world kids and adults in their natural environments (in front of a hut, bathing in dirty water) reading typical #FirstWorldProblems aloud to show just how outrageous our issues truly are. The results? Donations that totaled over a million days worth of clean water to those in need! (1)

 

2. Cancer Research UK

Cancer Research UK logo

The #NoMakeUpSelfie trend wasn’t started by Cancer Research UK, but when a bunch of women began posting pictures online of themselves without make-up and encouraging their friends to donate to the cause, the non-profit very wisely jumped on board. The charity sent out a tweet saying:

Cancer Research UK Tweet

The campaign isn’t ours but every £ helps #beatcancersooner.” The results? They raised $13.3 Million USD in six days! (2) Why is this my favorite campaign so far? The honesty of Cancer Research UK created a transparent and honest relationship with participants. Also, as a woman proud of her face and body as they are, make-up or not, a campaign promoting women to bare their natural beauty gets an A+ in my book!

 

3. ALS ASSOCIATION

ALS Logo

It’s the biggest viral trend today and it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere any time soon. It’s the #IceBucket challenge. With this campaign, individuals have two options: pouring a bucket of ice cold water on themselves and making a small donation to the ALS Association, or making a much larger donation to the ALS Association but dodging the polar bear-esque plunge. Time limit? 24 hours! With the sharing capabilities of social media and the naturally occurring domino effect that comes with any contest that asks you to challenge others, the #IceBucket challenge has taken over social media. The results? $94.3 Million raised from July 29, 2014 to August 27, 2014. (3)

The use of social media for non-profits has proven to be successful time and time again. The results are in the numbers and as we all know, numbers don’t lie. One of the biggest draws for companies to use social media, is the rate at which a message can spread.

One thing is for sure, whether these non-profits raised money or not, they met their most important goal, awareness. When done right, the buzz around these non-profits and their purpose continues to rise with every share, post and call to action. The ice bucket challenge has not only raised millions of dollars, it has also proved a very important point. As Oscar Wilde once said, “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

 

*Sources

(1) http://www.nonprofithub.org/social-media/the-top-4-nonprofit-social-media-campaigns-of-2013-and-what-you-can-learn/

(2) http://guardianlv.com/2014/08/ice-bucket-challenge-better-than-the-no-makeup-selfies/

(3) http://www.alsa.org/news/media/press-releases/ice-bucket-challenge-082714.html