Virality: A Science or luck?

Virality seems to be the word on everyone's mind and the goal of every marketing and ad department.

Since the creation of social media, the holy grial, so to say, has been creating the most popular and most viewed advertising. Just as the medical term "Viral", in marketing, being viral or virality is the spreading of information from person to person. Unlike the sickness however, you actually want to infect everyone with your marketing genius.

How do you create such a massive marketing infection? Over time, many marketers and self proclaimed advertising profits have conjured up ways to achieve this marketing super-stardom. Some have been successful, as other have not. (see examples below) These campaigns have included every tip and trick from contest incentives to catchy jingles to dancing animals and talking babies. But not all of these maneuvers work for everyone.

 Dollar Shave Club viral video success.

PSP's racy subway advertising fail. 

So, is virality a science or luck?

While working on creating my own viral video and covering related material in numerous marketing classes, I became curious about Virality myself. I researched blogs, websites, social media sites, and of course, youtube. After this laborious effort of trolling the internet, I finally found the answer.

Virality, while not quite a science, does have a pretty effective recipe and if followed, will increase a campaign's chances at reaching the viral level.


Viral Marketing
Time: < 60 seconds
Yields: Millions

1 C.        Effective Content
2 C.        Sharing
1 Pinch     Accessibility
1/3 C.      Strong Branding
1 Tsp.      Humor
1 Stick     User-Generated Content


Mix together, cross your fingers, and share with anyone and everyone. 

Now, while this recipe may change and serving sizes may be altered, the basics are still the same. Viral marketing must have interesting and useful content. Without a concrete back bone, the rest of your campaign will fall apart. There is, however, one exception and one only to this rule: humor. What viewers love more than things that they can actually apply in real life is a good piece of comedic advertising. Comedy is a balance though, so be careful. It can elevate a brand or it could ruin it.

The next key element in becoming viral is sharing. Although this may seem like a no-brainer, sharing is usually the biggest obstacle when achieving virality. You have to put yourself in the shoes of the consumer and think - what will not only grab their attention, but what will make your advertising so interesting to them that they want, no NEED, to share it with everyone they know. Knowing your targeted audience and how to reach them is the key to success here.

Last, but certainly not least is user-generated content. Referred to as UCG in the internet world,  user-generated content is, well, exactly what is sounds like: content created by users. This is important when creating viral marketing because the more active a user can be in a campaign, the more interest is drawn and the likelihood of them sharing your advertising significantly increases. Forums, photo contents, Twitter contests, Facebook likes, and blogs just like this are superb examples that will engage your audience and send your advertising to the top, or, well, pretty close.

So next time you or your company wants to create the next best viral thing on the internet, try this recipe and pray to the marketing gods and maybe, just maybe, you'll be among the few to achieve internet marketing greatness. 

Does "Social Media Influence" Matter

Go to the website klout.com and see what your "score" is. That's right, Klout, a social media influence website, has set up a way to score how well you influence others through your social media outlets. This includes number of followers on Twitter, likes on Facebook, retweets, comments, shares, etc. You can link up your other social media accounts (LinkedIn, Youtube, Google+, etc), but these do not have as much influence as Facebook and Twitter yet. Users have a number of "topics" that they can be influential in/ These are determined by Klout or by the user. Users can then vote on the influence of others by giving them "+K's" in certain topics. These can help lead to score increases, both to the reciever and the giver. Does having a high score matter? Some people argue yes. For example, from personal experience, I applied for an online marketing job and they asked me what my Klout score was (at the time of this blog post, it is 63). Klout has a number of perks you can unlock depending on your score and what you are influential in. Finally, it can fuel competition with friends and give someone bragging rights. But how much can truly be determined by an online algorithm? It is a starting point, but not everything. A downside to it is that quite a bit of the influence is determined by how often you use Klout. For example, I did a comparison of my score to scores of people I learned how to utilize social media from. My score is 63. Neil Hair, one of the faces of the Saunders College, has a 44. Mike Johansson, my "Social Media and Public Relations" professor, has a score of 68, only five points higher than me. Both of those individuals are much more of an influence than I am. In conclusion, in my opinion, influence cannot be simply determined through a score online. It can be a good start to digging deeper into it, but if you want to make a profound impact on the world, take it outside of the computer. Say and act like what you tweet.

Television, Brands and Twitter Ranking

So what do they all have common? 

In a recent article by Ad Age big brands are generating buzz on Twitter by using national TV advertising . Actors and celebrities are playing a huge factor in getting people to tweet and generate buzz about companies like Starbucks and Subway . This isn't a new strategy but by combining TV ads and the power of social media brands are now able to get more recognition than before.Google jumped on the opportunity for some twitter buzz when Apple decided not to use Google Maps. To get over 41 thousand retweets  and 65 000 comments Google Tweeted:

               Dear #apple. Why have you got rid of Google maps - there is no street view and I am unable to fly like an eagle through your satellite view.

Full article :

https://plus.google.com/share?url=http://adage.com/u/cMR8Db

2nd Down and Tweet to Go!

 Since the advent of social media, there has been no shortage of celebrities and other famous people getting involved. Their troves of loyal fans elevate them up the social media ladder and bring them closer to the level reached only by the likes of Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber. These followers are not always the greatest thing though, especially in times of crisis.

Monday, September 24^th is a day will live in infamy. The Green Bay Packers lost their game to the Seattle Seahawks by intercepting a pass and preventing a touchdown, or so it seemed. The referee’s, unable to correctly interpret the play awarded the Seahawks a game winning touchdown and in turn, set the “Twittersphere” ablaze.

Almost instantly, viewers of the game as well as players began to voice their opinions. TJ Lang, the Packers’ offensive lineman took to the 140 character social media site in a way that created one of the most viral post of the night. His wrap up of the game was, “Got f*cked by the refs.. Embarrassing. Thanks nfl.” The post, less then 24hours later had received 67.4k retweets and 16.7k favorites as those around the country shared his same thoughts. There in lies the problem though.

Professional athletes reflect the teams and the league they play for. They are employees and needless to say, their employees (and their followers) do pay attention to what they say. This means that there are lessons to be learned from actions like these for the rest of us.

1.     Think before you Tweet: No matter how angry, upset, heartbroken, excited, or emotional you are, think before you act. Once content lives on the internet, it stays on the internet.

2.    Don’t insult your employer: There is no positive thing which will come out of saying your employer sucks. Not even if they switched from the comfy, high quality toilet paper to the horrible cheap kind, insulting them on a social network only makes you look bad.

3.    Do it in private: If you really need to use Social Media to spread your angry rants, make your profile private. That way people won’t be easily able to see how much you hate Roger Goodell, a random politician, or your freshman year Data professor.

4.    When in doubt, yell it out(loud): If you really aren’t sure if you should post something to your public account, just ask yourself “would I be comfortable saying this out loud in a room with my boss or prospective employer?”

Professional football players and those alike have made the mistakes already and will suffer a marginal fine because of it. Would you really want to risk losing your job though? I can bet you don’t make nearly as much as they do to be so cavalier with your words.