| Going viral is harder than it seems. It takes risk-taking, determination and sometimes just plain old luck.
Today at work someone sneezed and I said, "Bless you." I'm not sure why people don't say "God Bless you," anymore which is the title of my upcoming book Who took the God out of "God bless you!" A few other people said "Bless you." All of a sudden a thought came over me to create a bless-you wave. This is where if everyone had the rule to say "Bless you," when they heard either a sneeze or someone else say "Bless you," you could get hundreds of people saying it. If I videoed this happening at work and posted it to YouTube, it could go viral. Another thought I had was to do a wave at work, like they do at sporting events, and video it. Then try to make it viral. One key to going viral is to get someone with a lot of clout to like it on some social media. The key would be the rule: This could be a great experiment while giving a talk somewhere. Though, people could backfire by people doing it too well. How could you use this idea or a slight change to create your own viral content? You could also reverse engineer viral content. Find things that are viral or going viral and ask why? What is it about the content that got so many people to watch, like or retweet it? The TV show "Nathan for You" has created a few viral videos that are pretty instructive.
The best way to get something to go viral is to make it so funny, different or interesting that people must share it. |