Ah the holy grail of free, massive traffic. The viral post. In this case, the viral Facebook post. When it happens it’s an event. It’s an avalanche of visitors to your page and website.
In other words – it’s marketing nirvana. Even if you only capture fraction of the visitors that hit your site you just added hundreds if not thousands to your list overnight. Not a bad supplement to your marketing mix.
So how do you do it? How do you create a viral rush of traffic?
Well – it’s not an exact science. It’s more art than anything. But there are patterns and elements you need to pay attention to.
Business Insider recently released an awesome 14 point guide to creating a massively viral Facebook post. Here’s the slideshow
Heres a short overview of each point. (make sure you check out the examples in the slideshow though)
- Use images/videos
- Show personality
- Be familiar
- Tell stories
- Be funny
- Be a little creepy
- Tell a moving, inspiring, or powerful story
- Make it safe to view at work
- Don’t hard sell
- Accept that the public is in control of your post
- Video Length is important
- Post between 8am – 4pm and NOT on the weekends
- Post content everywhere (Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Blog, etc)
The examples are awesome. I really like the Old Spice commercials. They’re so outrageous, so ridiculous they DEMAND a response.
Coincidentally that’s why so many meme images go viral. They’re images, funny, creepy, and or have enough personality to go around.
I made a few Facebook related memes as examples to really drive the concept home. Like, comment, tweet, re-blog, and generally share the hell out of this post if you like them!
Thanks to memegenerator.net for making this really easy and fun! They’ve got a bunch of commonly used meme characters you can use.
That baby picture certainly got my attention.
Never thought about the best time to post is between 8am – 4pm and NOT on the weekends?
Yes viral is the way to get more Facebook likes quickly. I think being funny or controversial is the best way. After all those are the types of videos that always spread fast on the like of Youtube and it works on Facebook posts just as well.
The best way I have done it, is take something that is trending in the world (obviously related to my facebook page) and put a funny twist on it. I posted a funny, yet different version of the “Guess what day it is” commercial and received about 20,000 likes and over 1,000 shares …. try a funny twist on something.
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The best way I have done it, is take something that is trending in the world (obviously related to my facebook page) and put a funny twist on it.