There are a couple sure-fire ways on how to make your content go viral–creating a free report that spreads like the wind, and hosting a contest that gets people to reply and bring in friends.
Why do Free Reports & Contests work for People?
They’re all about giving away supreme value that just has to be shared. You get out there in front of everyone quickly and easily.
Imagine hosting a contest and bringing in 10 to 100 times your normal amount of traffic, just from people replying to your invitation, and passing your site along to friends. Or imagine seeing results much faster than SEO and PPC combined from an awesome and juicy content report you created.
Viral Content in Steps
So let’s cover some steps on creating your viral content or article report and contest starting with your report or article.
How to Make Your Content Go Viral with Giveaway Reports
A report or article given away that goes viral can bring you targeted visitors, in addition to generating hundreds of backlinks that will help you rank in the long run. How do you create a viral article that people can’t help but pass on? Just follow these guidelines.
1: Make Your Article or Content Extremely Controversial or Extremely Useful
There are basically two kinds of content that get passed around: articles that are controversial and shocking, or those that are so useful that people save them, and use them as references.
Try to pinpoint something that your community would really go crazy about. Is there vital information you can bring together that will catch fire and get passed around to thousands in your blogging or business community?
When content is really useful and zero dollars, it gets attention.
You can also really go against the grain, and get controversial if you’re comfortable with that. Not all are, and you don’t have to use this option, but some might already have this spark in their personalities, and tend to use that in their blogging already. If you have this in you, just package up all of that controversy in a report or article.
2: Understanding & Getting the Initial Distribution of Your Content
In order for your report or content to have the chance of taking off, it needs to get initial distribution. In other words, it needs to be downloaded by between 100 to 500 people first, before the viral power can take effect.
3: So How Do You Get Initial Distribution & People Replying & Participating?
Lists:
Lists are a big source. If you have an email list of a few thousand people, or know people with such lists, send them the content article. If your report is really good, other list owners should be glad to pass it on for you.
Forums:
Post the article to internet forums. You should even pay to post it in a commercial section if necessary. This will pay off, because if your report is great, it’ll generate many replies, and will in turn get you more viewers and more downloads.
Your Own Network of People:
Not everyone has a big list or access to others with one, but most of us are on social media. Don’t neglect your own network, like posting to your Facebook wall. Just having several hundred friends, can help you get that needed initial distribution.
4: Use Tools to Go Viral
There are a few ways you can increase the viral flow of your free content.
Social Media:
One method is to embed Facebook and Twitter links inside the content. Always make it easy for them to Like, Comment or Tweet your report.
Opt In:
You can also require an opt-in to your subscription or newsletter in order to download the report. Be aware that while this can really help you capitalize on the traffic generated from your report, it can also turn some people off from downloading it. Some just want the content, without the list.
Just Ask People:
Many times people are trying to be respectful of copyright, so by just asking, and letting people know it’s OK to share can go a long way. Let them know that they have permission to pass the article on, and ask them to share it with their friends.
Creating content that spreads like the wind does take creativity and market knowledge. It entails creating *something original, getting it to a few hundred people, and the having the mechanisms in place to help it spread.
*Please be sure to take note of your creation being original.
If done well, this free article or report tactic can launch an obscure blog or business into the limelight. Now let’s move on to our second tactic.
How To Make Content Go Viral by Running a Contest…
Have a Prize that Knocks the Socks Off People
Here’s how to launch a contest that others will feel excited to reply and pass along.
High Cash or High Trend:
At the core, make it all about the prize. Contests that tend to do well are those that have very valuable prizes. These are usually high cash value items or very trendy on the market, like a Kindle or iPad or vacation somewhere.
For More Viral Reply, Friends Have to Want to Help:
To gauge if you have this kind of value to offer as your prize, your audience has to be willing to stretch to win it. This means it should be valuable enough that when they tell their friends about it, their friends will genuinely want to help their friend win.
Not the Typical Rafflecopter Please:
That has to be pretty good for friends to bother, right? We’re not just talking about the every day Rafflecopter giveaway you can find all over the place on the blogosphere.
(*Photo chosen purposely, and please insert that squealing Psycho music sound as a metaphor of the stabbing death your typical Rafflecopter event will befall.)
For Going Viral, Use a Voting Mechanism Instead
Try something different like holding a vote.
Why?
Because people will invite their friends to vote on their submission. They may not invite their friends to participate, but if what it takes to win is to get 100 of their friends to vote on their submission, then that’s what many people will do.
Let Others Do the Viral Work for You:
For example, the event is to see who can create the best catchy headline for a theme or topic. You have 100 participants, and each holds their own mini-campaign inviting their friends to come vote on their video.
If each person manages to get 40 people to your site, that’s 4,000 new people to your site. Can you see how you can make those numbers grow with more submissions?
Leverage the Power of Social Networking for More Reply
One of the best ways to get an event to spread in a viral way, is to leverage the power of social networking.
Next Page Strategy:
Make it easy for people to share the event and content. After someone submits for the event, the next page they see should help them post their submission to their Facebook wall.
Buttons Everywhere to Reply & Share:
Also on every page of the event, not only have a Facebook “Like” button and a Facebook “Comment” box, but have a “Tweet” button.
Gain New Exposure:
Most people have several hundred friends on Facebook, many of whom won’t be exposed to your site yet.
Tap Into the New Search Engine Formula Like We Do at Club-Content:
Many are still unaware of these changes, but search engines have started, and will continually increase how they rank sites based on content relevancy, reply and sharing status. They look at how often content is being re-posted in social media as a gauge for potential rankings.
Our small family of Club-Content Members are learning this new SEO paradigm.
If you follow this formula from above on how to make content go viral with free content reports and contests, you have a very good chance of creating content that gets passed to a lot of people. You’ll generate buzz in your industry, get new traffic, and potentially even improve your search engine rankings.
And it was all from Content.
I sometimes like to enter the ‘Caption This’ contests. Reading the entries of others is as fun as thinking up your own. 😉
Those are always more fun for me too. Things are just changing a lot with blogging. Everyone has to step it up more, and think outside of the box. It’s just more competitive, and people tire of the old stuff.
This is fantastic. I often have thought about turning several points in my many blog posts into a free report and this, I believe, pushes me in that direction!!!
You should definitely Jacqueline! And seriously consider writing an ebook too. You have so much to offer in your niche. I just got through the Amazon Kindle process, and then I’ll write up some of my strategies for our Club-Content members on that. I’m always there if you need help;)
I follow some of the points…now I’ve got a few more to try out =) TY
I am always impressed with how much I learn every time I visit your site. Always great, innovative ideas…always gives me lots to think about and realize how much there is to learn. As always, thank you!
You’ve shared soo much to think about and keep in mind for optimum views/shares, etc. I don’t think of a lot of these, so thank you so much for posting them so that I can save them to favorites and keep them in mind. Voting and contests, I hadn’t thought about (in particular).
You’re so welcome Pamela:)
You’re welcome Lynn! Good to see you back:)
Yah, the contests especially need to be unusual from the norm, because it is much harder to get people to do them, so it has to be good.
I have done a few giveaways on my blog and they are hard to do. I know that money usually gets people’s attention. Thank you for sharing this wonderful information.
Really informative post.Much thanks again. Cool.
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