by Constant Content

The online marketplace is an extremely competitive one, and creating content which has the potential to end up going viral may seem particularly challenging. What anyone stepping into the world of Internet marketing needs to realise, however, is that it is social media, powered by the public, which offers you this potential. No business can afford to ignore this fact. What you ultimately should be seeking to achieve when it comes to creating content for your blog or website is something that people find useful or interesting enough that they want to share it with their friends. If people like your content enough, then they will share it, effectively doing your advertising for you. Once this process occurs, your content has already made the first step in going viral and being shared by others on social networks and forums all across the net. Best of all, creating great content and making it go viral does not have to cost you a thing! The following takes a look at the five most important factors which can make your content more popular than you ever imagined.

Content Going Viral 

1 – Uniqueness

While it might be true that just about every conceivable subject has been written about time and time again on the Web, it is not as hard as you may think to take a different approach on a subject and appeal to a more specific audience. Define your style in your writing to formulate unique content which your audience will enjoy reading. Quality and originality are absolutely essential both for the sake of your readers’ patience and for search engine optimization. Give your readers the impression that they are missing out if they don’t read your content.

2 – Scannability

The average reader surfing the Web only consumes about a fifth of the content that they come across. Writing for the Web is not like writing for print, and while it might seem a shame that most of your visitors won’t actually read your latest blog post word-for-word, it is a fact that people tend to have a short attention span when viewing content online. Remember this when writing your content, and make it easily scannable by breaking it down into sections with subheadings so that people may easily pick out the exact information that they are looking for.

3 – Usefulness

Creating content which is useful to someone is a must. Hands-on and practical information such as how-to articles, list-type articles and any other type of informative or engaging writing is sure to catch your readers’ eyes. If your readers can start putting into practice the information that you give them right away, the content has a much higher chance of going viral. This is precisely why how-to articles, for example, are so popular. Just think about how many times people search in Google for an answer or a tutorial of some sort.

4 – Consistency

It takes time to build up rapport and become an authority in the eyes of your audience. You won’t be able to achieve this overnight, but it will come in time. To make this happen, you must maintain consistency by defining your style and sticking to what you know and what you enjoy. Once your readers start to trust you and enjoy seeing your content on a regular basis, they will become regular visitors. They will also be much more likely to share your content. Try to stick to a fairly regular schedule for creating and updating your content.

5 – Sharing

Last, but certainly not least, make it easy for people to share your content. Most readers are less likely to share your content if they have to log into Facebook or any other social media site and then manually copy and paste a link into the status field. Make it as easy as possible for them to share content by ensuring that social media buttons are available at the bottom of every page. You don’t need to have buttons for lots of sites – just the ones for very popular services such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are usually adequate. This way, your readers can share content with just a couple of clicks.

What other tips do you have to make content go viral?  Please share your thoughts in the comments.