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You know someone’s going to ask you for it; your boss, your client, your editor. The minute “The Dress” hit their Facebook feed this summer you could already hear the words forming, “Why don’t we put something together like that dress thing? Show me what you’ve got by Friday”.
The viral post. It’s the double rainbow of the content marketing world, an often raved about but rarely achieved piece of content that is so shockingly shareable that it takes on a life of it’s own. No one’s ever met the creator of a viral post in person, only a guy, that knew a guy, that knew a girl that did.
Well, get ready because we’ve taken a closer look at the top viral posts of 2015 and uncovered the hidden formula that has brought global fame to sneezing panda’s and biting Charlie’s. Follow these simple instructions and you’ll be sharing a SXSW stage with Grumpy Cat in no time.
Make people think they’ve gone insane
The photo of a seemingly innocuous dress was posted on Tumblr first, then picked up by Buzzfeed and subsequently covered by everyone from Mashable to CNN. The world went crazy and was formally divided into two groups: The Blue and Blacks and the Gold and Whites. The Buzzfeed post that kicked it off has been viewed over 38 Million times.
Share the secret of eternal life
109-Year-Old Woman Said Secret To Long Life Is Avoiding Men
Whether it’s staying away from men, or staying with them, Centenarians (the original millennials) are viral dynamite. The Huffington Post had a break out hit with Jessie Gallan’s lifelong avoidance of men, while USA Todays’ top post of the year featured a husband and wife celebrating 82 years of marriage. The posts received 2M and 580K shares respectively.
Adele. Anything to do with Adele
Hello. How are you? Not too shabby if you were able to shoehorn the name Adele into a post this fall. The Hello music video on her official YouTube page flew past a half billion views in just a few weeks. Everything she touched turned to platinum, whether it was jamming with Jimmy Fallon or pranking a group of Adele impersonators. Even writing a post about an Adele video could easily net you a couple million views.
Scare the bejeezus out of everyone
It’s the modern day incarnation of the e-mail chain warnings your mom still sends you. Articles about scams, medical recalls and products own the top rankings for sites such as WebMD, who’s top post this year was a Recall of Kids Tylenol. Closer to home, the top post on Vancity Buzz this year (by a longshot) reported on which sunscreens were most toxic. The post was shared over 600K times.
Zombies FTW
Zombie-themed ‘Walking Dead’ cruise to Set Sail in January
The only thing better than writing about old people is writing about dead people. Well, the walking dead anyway. The top post on FoxNews.com this year detailed an upcoming Zombie themed cruise and was shared 1.5M times, 5x more than the next top post on the news site.
Two words: Drunk Babies
When you realize you’ve had one too many
Vine may be a relative newcomer compared to viral stalwarts like YouTube and Facebook, but the platform couldn’t escape our love for babies, fails and people that seem way too drunk. Put them all together and you have one of the most popular vines of the year at over 56M loops and 475K ReVines.
The truth is there is no magic formula. Viral posts are outliers, even for sites such as Buzzfeed and ViralNova. The next time someone asks you to create a viral post, instead of telling them it’s impossible, take 10 minutes to share this list with them, or send them a sample headline based on it, like “Watch Adele tell a baby zombie the secrets to eternal life”.
Then you can get back to creating the meaningful, engaging content that people love to read, share and act upon. If you want to learn more about benchmarks and best practices for that type of content, send a note over to info@pressboardmedia.com and we’d be happy to help.
