What Drives Content to Become Viral?

Promote your artwork and material. When we think of marketing, we most usually think of product and business marketing and advertising. And, without a doubt, these are the areas where the majority of marketing takes place. But what about telling a narrative and promoting it?

More than analytics and SEO, what you probably need in the case of content is to make it word-of-mouth-proof. To put it another way, make people want to share it.

What do popular articles on Medium, for example, do well that helps them go viral, other than appeasing the algorithm and curator gods?

STEPPS

Jonah Berger created the STEPPS paradigm to explain why things become viral. It stands for "Social Currency, Triggers, Emotions, Public, Practical Value, and Stories." As a result, how goods can be promoted to maximise sharability.

We will concentrate on developing insight into Emotions and Practical Values for content, but here is a summary of the relevance and efficacy of each phase.

1. Social Currency: people will share content and information that will make them look good (knowledgeable, funny, charismatic, useful, etc)
2. Triggers: whatever can be on top of mind will be at the tip of the tongue. To exemplify this point, Rebecca Black’s song Friday was statistically proven to be heard very popularly on Fridays!
3. Emotions: when we are emotionally engaged with something, we share it (care=share). From a marketing perspective, it is useful to create products and content that can elicit strong emotions.
4. Public: the more public something is, the more people will want to conform, and therefore will share it or imitate it.
5. Practical Value: things that can be used get shared. Can it be why there are so many “how-to” videos on YouTube and specialized websites?
6. Stories: narratives have forever been human’s favourite vessel for information. Good narrative calls for engagement and shares.

EMOTION AS A PRACTICAL VALUE

As you might expect, tales play an important role in virality when it comes to content. Without getting into the specifics of form and narrative approaches, the narrative aspect of the material is either a) intrinsic (personal experience, news, reflection, etc.) or b) supplemental ( tutorials, photography, etc.).

Why is it important to emphasise emotion and practical value?

Information alone is insufficient.

Telling long-term smokers that smoking kills is unlikely to change their habit. For starters, they are aware. Second, knowledge does not account for all of the fundamental motivators that compel individuals to do something they may not wish to do logically. The majority of these underlying variables are emotional in nature.

The same is true for anything that is intended to be shared (movies, videos, articles, blogs, and so on). Giving knowledge on a topic may pique the curiosity of a few people engaged, but it may fall short of captivating and grabbing everyone else. According to studies that studied the corpus of New York Times stories, items that provoked the strongest emotions in readers were shared with more frequency.

This is why we support talent show contestants who have a compelling backstory. Why we discuss certain movie sequences after we've seen them. Why we care about the majority of things. Because they elicit an emotional response from us. And what we feel is typically something we share.

The more intense the better in terms of eliciting emotions. In other words, the more we can elicit emotional arousal in people, the better our chances of success. This is regardless of whether the feelings are positive or negative.

anger and anxiety > sadness

excitement and awe > contentment.

What should I do with it?

Another powerful component in content virality is "practical value." Why? Simply said, individuals must know how to perform things – whether physically, emotionally, or otherwise. However, it is not the end of the story. Practical usefulness may take various forms, not merely "how to..."

Why would anyone want to share it? According to Berger, people desire to provide practical, valuable knowledge.

From The New York Times to your blog, page, website, or YouTube channel

To go as near to virality as possible with your material, strive to trigger strong emotions in your readers or viewers, or offer them something to look good with when they share it. Make them angry, amaze them, or teach them something. Who are they?

Every single one of us. In fact, examine what we, as viewers, readers, or content consumers in general, tend to share with others. Consider what we want and offer it to us!

What is it that you are upset about?

What piques your interest?

What do you excel at?

If you know how to remove mould from shower tiles without becoming inebriated by bleach fumes...

Write about it, make a movie about it, or do what you gotta do!