The Promise and Difficulties of Viral Content

If it's your responsibility to build an online brand for your company, you've probably obsessed about creating viral content more than once. Unfortunately, there's no sure recipe for viral success. No one can guarantee that a specific type of content will drive millions of visitors to your website overnight. Nevertheless, for those in the communications and media field, the idea of creating something—whether that's a picture, an article, or a video—that causes their company's brand to spread through the Internet like wildfire is what makes viral advertising exciting.

Creating viral content isn't easy. Unless you can predict the future, you have no way to tell whether or not an online ad you create will go viral or be seen by fewer than fifty people. However, you can tip the scales in your favor by creating ads that play to the emotions of your target audience. According to an article on TheGlobeandMail.com, online ads that are especially touching have been trending over the past few weeks. These ads aren't becoming viral content simply because they're tearjerkers, however. The ads are popular because they tell a story that the people they are targeted at can relate to on an emotional level.

Content that tells a relatable story isn't the only type of viral content. People also like to share funny content, content that allows them to express themselves, and content that they feel is useful. So, if you can't think of a story to tell that relates to your product, you could try an image with a quote, a funny video, or an informative article. Bear in mind that positive content is more likely to be shared than negative content.

Viral content has numerous advantages. The main reason viral advertising appeals to so many companies is simple: it's free. Not only can you save money on advertising costs, but people trust companies and products that are recommended to them by their friends and family members. It's therefore not just free advertising: it's priceless. Viral content has several other benefits:

• Your brand can be seen by millions of people within a short amount of time
• Good viral content drives continuous, organic traffic to your website
• When people share your content via social networking websites, you have a captive self-selected audience

Like everything in life, viral content has both pros and cons. When it comes to viral content though, difficulties can be are hard to spot. One concern for businesses is that viral content can attract negative attention. If viral content that you've created attracts negative attention, it could be detrimental to your business. Unfortunately, viral content moves quickly, so there's no way to control it. If you're on a mission to create viral content to build up your company's brand, it's therefore worth testing the content in a focus group before posting it online.

Ultimately, creating viral content is a great way to brand your company quickly. However, there's no guarantee that any content you create will go viral. Even if it does, you have no control over it after the fact. The best option for branding your company online is to create content that is consistently beneficial to your target market without putting a lot of effort into creating viral content. If the content you've created does happen to go viral, you can then be confident that it's content that is high quality and will help people perceive your company in a positive light.

(Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net)