The Social Media Dilemma:

How to Create Viral Content

Zmags Social Media Whitepaper Series – Part 2

© Copyright 2010 Zmags Inc. All rights reserved.
Zmags Social Media Whitepaper Series – Part 2

About this whitepaper

The content is protected by copyright and cannot be duplicated without permission from
Zmags Inc, 320 Congress Street, Boston MA 02210, USA.

The author or any other advisors distributing this guide can under no circumstances be held
responsible for any damage or business impact from taking advice from this whitepaper.

For any questions regarding this whitepaper, please email

Peter Velikin, VP of Marketing at pvelikin@zmags.com
Published September 2010 © all rights reserved.

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Many companies have a goal of creating messages with “viral” appeal and con-
tent. The value of viral sharing is that a message is broadcast and passed along
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from one person to the next to a rapidly growing audience. This is incredibly
powerful for marketers.

In a viral situation, messages trend quickly and can rise to the top of search
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engines. This is of great value for a company to improve brand recognition and
awareness without reliance upon a hefty outbound marketing budget.

In viral sharing, people who view your message will send it to others,
typically more than one or two friends. This results in the message be-
ing “virally” shared, such as a contagious disease is communicated, to
larger and larger pools of recipients, resulting in rapidly reaching a much
larger audience.

83% of consumers trust the

opinion of a friend who has
used the product before.
Source: Forrester Research

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Not only is the content reaching a large audience through viral sharing, there is
another powerful benefit. Because the message is being passed from someone
known, the recipient is more inclined to open and view or read the content.

This makes a viral marketing campaign a powerful tool that can be effectively
used to create awareness. However creating a viral campaign is not that simple.
There are many ads that are released that do not warrant viral exposure.

The tricks and techniques to harness the ability to have a message that tran-
scends ordinary distribution channels has been a goal for marketers universally.
With the advent of Web2.0 and the ability for the audience to disseminate and
promote the message, marketers who can create ‘viral’ content have proven
that the campaign is being seen by a diverse audience.

Because viral marketing programs are so incredibly powerful, for both distribu-
tion and readership, the quest for what causes a campaign to “go viral” is the
search for the ‘holy grail’ for marketers.

What is a ‘Viral’ marketing campaign?

According to Wikipedia: “There is debate on the origination and the populariza-
tion of the term Viral Marketing, though some of the earliest uses of the cur-
rent term are attributed to Harvard Business School graduate Tim Draper (1)
and Harvard Business School (2)faculty member Jeffrey Rayport(3). The term
was later popularized by Jeffrey Rayport in his 1996 Fast Company article Mar-
keting’(4), and Tim Draper and Steve Jurvetson (5) of the venture capital firm

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Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 1997 to describe Hotmail’s email practice of ap-

pending advertising for itself in outgoing mail from their users.”
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The usage of the term viral marketing was originated from the concept of a
virus and how it runs rampant among a community. Based loosely upon epi-
demiology, and the virus ability to rapidly reproduce, when we refer to viral
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marketing, the term loosely refers to the power of word of mouth or user-to-
user sharing spreading the message in an exponential algorithm, potentially
out-pacing broadcast.

Therefore the ability to harness this capability of creating “viral” content is

desire-able to understand and utilize by marketing professionals.

What factors control whether your content is virally shared

amongst a community? Can you ‘create’ a viral campaign or
not?
Evaluation of current viral campaigns has resulted in the genesis of a list of
factors that have a greater propensity for being associated with viral content.
Although each of these factors can be individually attained, there are some-
times combinations of these factors that when combined, can have a potent
success rate for viral growth and sharing.

Analysis has identified Six (6) idiosyncrasies that are consistent with and
tend to result in more effective viral campaigns. Developing viral content
can incorporate one, or several of these factors.

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6 Factors of Viral Marketing Campaigns

1. Originality
Copy something that someone else has done,
the campaign simply is no longer original.
Therefore the success of a prior viral market-
ing campaign most likely won’t translate into
a copycat campaign. Viral sharing is greatest
when content is unique and new.

Most viral content also shares the feature that it’s transparent. The audience
understands who has created the content.

By being genuine and allowing the mask to be transparent, the audience can
identify with the message. Messages that are too sales focused do not seem to
have the same viral tendencies as messages where the sales component is less
the message of the campaign. The appeal of some viral campaigns is that the
message is so overt, it’s an exaggeration of the qualities of the product.

Both the Evian water rollerblading babies and the Old Spice commercials share
this quality.

Steve Brule shares tips on how to make a viral video, and in it, he sings his
name into the mirror. So, we know who it is. That’s a pretty fair indication of be-
ing transparent.

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Original content has appeal because it’s fresh and new. The Old Spice com-
mercial had great appeal. It was new and fresh and created a buzz that people
felt they wanted to share the content. Ironically, Old Spice does not report that
there was a lift in sales associated with the campaign, however they have suc-
cessfully repositioned the product from being a scent that was appropriate for
grand pop, to being a scent you may purchase for your boyfriend. This should
yield sales and results in the long term.

The media you select to share your content can be through a blog, through
video content, or through a website. Using a media like a zmag is a great way
to incorporate original content in a format that can be shared across multiple
platforms. The ability to embed video, flash, images and other content means
that the format can lend itself to sharing a story or presentation with multiple
components.

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2. Easily Shared
On his blog, Dan Zarrella award-winning social, search, and viral marketing
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scientist and author of the O’Reilly Media book “The Social Media Marketing
Book“, and also of Hubspot cites the following information on creating viral con-
tent from his study, “Richard Dawkins (the father of memetics) says that memes
must contain 3 traits to be successful and one of them is “copying fidelity.” The
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idea must be capable of copying itself with a high degree of accuracy, otherwise
it will soon become unrecognizable. A good seeding mechanism will allow for
this and provide a way for users to copy and spread the viral creative in or close
to its original form.

Traditional offline word of mouth tends to have lower copying fidelity than on-
line, because of the lack of copy-and-paste functionality, but even among digital
communications methods, some provide greater accuracy in reproduction than
others. For instance, SMS generally requires that a person retype the message
before sending it to a new friends, whereas email has forward button that sends
verbatim copies.
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Creating the ‘viral’ content, then, must consider the way to keep the original form
and facilitate sharing the content without modification or denigration. A great
feature of the zmag format is that it is easily shared, without breaking up the
content, plus it incorporates some powerful analytics that can be important for
modifying a campaign or determining the most important components.

When the message is disseminated something happens that is a phenomena

like “whisper down the lane”. Unless the format can retain its original content
and form, the message is lost and the viral nature is substantially reduced. This
is similar to someone sharing a joke - they remember most of the joke, but tell is
incorrectly. It’s weakened the funny aspect if they have to explain why it’s funny,
or if they need to say “you should have been there”.

3. Lists
The Internet loves lists. According to BuzzFeed, the Internet loves lists and one
of the surest ways to attract mentions and links is by creating a list that gets
shared.

Tamar Weinberg, author of Techipedia, also attests to the viral nature of lists.
According to Tamar, “Let’s face it. People like lists. Lists win for a variety of rea-
sons: they’re easily digestible, they’re typically short, and they contain much
good information in one single article.”

Lists can be resources or links to sites that are important to your user. Blog rolls
are a type of list that shares blogs that readers of your blog may also find of in-
terest. Lists are bookmark-able as well and are prized sites on social bookmark-
ing sites such as Digg or Delicious.
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Lists are also “link bait” for others and are mentioned by Google as one of the
best ways to drive traffic to your blog. Zmags are great for sharing lists and in
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fact, there is a recent blog post that mentions 50 things that you can do with a
digital magazine.

According to eConsultancy in an article on their blog, “People cannot get enough

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of the easy-to-digest, does-what-it-says-on-the-tin list format. Lists often fall into

one of two camps: educational or amusing. As such they’re perfect linkbait fod-
der. “

Determining whether to create a list that’s educational or amusing will be deter-

mined by the tone of the campaign and the product mix.

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4. Quizzes, Giveaways And Freebies

Who doesn’t like something free - and the ability of the Internet to share info
about free ‘stuff’ or giveaways is a great way to get into a viral campaign. People
are likely to share information that they feel is valuable with their friends... and
what could be better than a free item or a chance to win a cool item like an iPad
or an Android Phone.

According to Mixergy, Quizzes are a terrific way to go viral. They are inexpen-
sive to produce, fun to share, and can result in attracting a great audience to
your product, website or Facebook page.

A great example is the focus of a story published in the Wall Street Journal in
June of 2009. Per the text, “On July 1, Moonfruit was a below-the-radar Web-
site building company with 400 followers on Twitter. Just a few days later, the
London-based company had acquired 47,000 followers on the micro-blogging
site, traffic to its home page had increased by 1,300% and the word “moonfruit”
was popping up all over the Internet.

The 52-employee firm says its newfound recognition was the result of a Twitter
contest that went viral, and it’s a marketing tactic increasingly being used by
small businesses.”

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The contest’s prize was a Mac Book computer, and the cost to enter the
campaign was a simple “tweet”. For the time of the contest, the company
got incredible exposure, proving that utilizing social media for a viral cam-
paign can be effective to increase traffic and brand awareness.

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5. Images
In a recent article in Harvard Business Review, Mikolaj Jan Piskorski an as-
sociate professor and a Marvin Bower Fellow in the Strategy unit at Harvard
Business School evaluated what characteristics are shared among the types
of social media that people share. According the HBR article, “The biggest dis-
covery: pictures.”People just love to look at pictures,” says Piskorski. “That’s the
killer app of all online social networks. Seventy percent of all actions are related
to viewing pictures or viewing other people’s profiles.”

In fact, images are one of the differentiating factors that can cause a document
to go viral.

Using unique and unusual or humorous pictures can start a viral sharing stream
as well. The more unusual the picture, the more inclined it is to be shared with
others. Of course, certain types of pictures wind up being used without copyright
mention, which is why it’s important to be sure that the picture can be shared
in a format that encourages keeping it intact, and not disseminated without the
rest of the content.

Formats that enable sharing of digital images and which keep campaigns orga-
nized are excellent for sharing viral images. Formats that do well include video
and electronic magazines. A digital magazine has the functionality to embed
video, feature photographs or images and is easily shared amongst a viral audi-
ence.

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Some viral pictures that have been utilized across the Internet include:

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6. Humor
When something is funny, you just want to share it. A great example are those
email chains that are passed from one person to the next. Usually shared jokes
may contain pictures, or a series of pictures - pictures of animals, babies, kit-
tens, puppies or baby animals seem to have a great propensity for people to
share them.

Humor is a terrific equalizer. If it is politically correct, or even ‘borderline,’ the

likelihood of viral sharing is increased.

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CONCLUSION:
Viral marketing campaigns start with a concept that enables sharing, that
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contains great images, and that is original and most likely humorous. Quiz-
zes, freebies, giveaways and list are also popular items to be shared.

When contemplating putting together a viral campaign offer, it’s important Read
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assure that the content is relayed in a shareable format. Embedding video,
pictures, and interactive quizzes or features is also a strong opportunity to
have the campaign become viral. Content can be shared in a format that
is capable of handling the content and is also a media that can be shared.
Digital magazine formats or zmags are excellent for embedding content and
creating a viral campaign.

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SOURCES:

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Draper

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Business_School

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Rayport

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/virus.html Read On.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jurvetson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing

http://www.flowtown.com/blog/how-to-make-a-viral-video-according-to-steve-brule

http://www.oldspice.com/videos/

http://danzarrella.com/viral-seeding.html

http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/how-to-go-viral

http://www.techipedia.com/2007/6-ideas-for-viral-content/

http://www.zmags.com/blog/published-digital-magazine-content

http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/6308-15-linkbait-techniques-for-seo-and-social-media

http://mixergy.com/quizzes-huge-twitter-analysis/

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124805161394863097.html

http://thefuturebuzz.com/2008/06/15/50-viral-images-and-how-they-spread/

http://jezebel.com/5652114/college-girls-power-point-#&@$%-list-goes-viral-gallery

http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/13/five-viral-rules-video/