How it happens no one really knows… Is there a special secret formula? Not really… can you guarantee you can do it again? Hmm possibly not – but you might never have thought it would happen – and it has!
The truth is unless you’re a celebrity or influencer with a huge following, chances are most of the content you post, while it will get noticed, won’t necessarily ‘go viral’ across a social channel. But when you get it right it’s so exciting to watch!
So what is viral?
Tell anyone who works in marketing their latest post just went viral and their content is being seen by thousands and thousands of people and it’s literally like music to their ears!
The term ‘going viral’ is usually given to content that has been posted and then been liked, shared, viewed, re-tweeted etc in quick succession by multiple users or accounts. As such this means that the post is generating vast numbers of impressions, engagement and activity. Viral as a term is usually applied to content that starts getting likes / views in the thousands not necessarily just hundreds, even though that in itself is still rather impressive!
In most cases it literally happens by pure accident and is very rarely as a result of planned content. It’s also, in my opinion, because the content you post or topic you post about is literally of that moment and absolutely relevant to that exact moment in time.
So here’s my example of a tweet I posted that took off and went crazy right before my eyes!
We all remember the snow, some of us have had two rounds of it now and are probably really hoping for some spring sunshine! However, cast your mind back a few weeks when it was snowing like mad across the country.
There I was in the London office and just popped out for about ten minutes to grab some food. Coming back across Oxford Street I couldn’t believe the amount of snow that had fallen in such a short space of time (it’s very rare for London to get snow you see, especially central London). So I took a picture on my phone and posted it on twitter.
That’s literally all I did, no planning, no post boosting and actually minimal thought applied.
Looking at my phone about 20 minutes later I noticed a number of notifications. The tweet had received around 60 odd likes and about 15 or so retweet’s, well I thought that was rather impressive considering it was a quick tweet and carried on with other work. Well little did I know but that was just the very beginning…
By the end of the day I think I’d had over 100 likes and probably 50 odd retweets. My impressions were probably around 3,000 or so which in itself is not bad going, so I went to bed rather happy.
But the next day… well I woke to find over 100 notifications of likes and retweet’s.
By 11am I’d topped 500 likes, 14.600k impressions and 2.350k engagements. (Yes I’d started to track this activity at this stage!)
11:45am saw 596 likes and 162 retweet’s and by 12:29pm the tweet had received 709 likes and 197 retweet’s. It was almost generating 100 likes an hour. By 1:26pm I’d received 855 likes and 232 retweet’s.
My phone could hardly keep up with the activity! I’d had so many comments, a request from ITV London to use the image for their news program and another from a national newspaper to post the picture. One news marketing channel even created a short video of my image which itself received over 200 views. My timeline was full of snow and red London buses!
What was really interesting though is that you could actually measure social activity in real time! There were periods where likes were flying in and periods where it slowed for a while so I could physically see who was active on twitter and when. The end results though were amazing, compared to my regular tweets anyway! – 1,199 likes and 334 retweet’s.
But while impressive those figures were nothing compared to the actual measured reach.
At the time of writing this article that one tweet has received 200,645k impression (which is the number of times people saw the tweet on twitter).
Its total engagements are currently 25,473k (times people interacted with the tweet eg, likes it, retweeted it, opened it, commented on it, etc).
Number of clicks on my media counted across videos and images were 21,706k.
I could then see 865 people had clicked on the hashtags used and 225 then clicked to view my profile.
I also received 27 replies.
What a shame I didn’t have any brand placement in it – well apart from a JD Sports bag that got picked up! Maybe they should thank me for the brand exposure!
The story as it unfolded! Most certainly my most successful tweet to date, but again, why?
Well I think it was down to a combination of factors to be honest. The timing of the tweet had to have played a part because everyone was talking about the snow and it was all over the news. The hashtags made the tweet more visible, yet I only used four so it really does go to show you that you don’t need loads of hashtags, just a few well selected and meaningful ones. I’d also tagged the location – Oxford Circus Station and location can also help a post become more visible.
The statement of ‘Snowing rather a lot then ❄’ was a bit fun because it’s not every day you see Oxford Street covered in snow as I mentioned earlier. I also think, even if I do say so myself, that the picture was rather well shot and visually strong with the predominantly white scene and a vibrant red bus. I’d even managed to get the Oxford Circus destination display on the front of the bus in the shot. Then with a very simple filter made the image really stand out and that was it! But it seemingly was all that was needed!
This also demonstrates that you don’t always need professional images for a successful post! Some great photography can be captured on your mobile devices. However I must stress that most strong well shot images do help posts get attention and help them stand out in a constantly moving news feed. (Just to make sure I don’t upset my photographer friends!)
Finally I’d say the hashtags played a vital part to make the post visible across a much larger audience and to journalists searching for specific content for their stories. It probably also helped that the tweet was getting a lot of engagement because twitter pushes posts with high interaction further up the news feed and makes them more visible.
So you see, it’s not magic or a specific formula, it’s a combination of factors and most importantly timing of something of topical interest that people are talking about at that specific moment in time.
I hope you like the picture and apologies if you’ve already seen it multiple times in your feed but I thought it worth the opportunity it presented to attempt to explain what actually happened. – Now if only I could do this with everything I promote…!
Until next time, have a wonderful Easter and don’t forget if you go viral please let me know by using #BeMoreSocial and tagging @JamesBiley and @FlatLivingLoves
James is Marketing and PR Manager for Countrywide’s Estate and Asset Management and Property Auction divisions.
The #BeMoreSocial column was created for Flat Living and its goal is to drive more effective communication within the property management industry.
If you have a customer service experience using any form of marketing or social media that you’d like to share then tweet and @FlatLivingLoves using the #BeMoreSocial.
We’d love to feature your examples in a future edition.
