Over the past year or so I’ve been doing research into the why and how of web content “going viral,” from my Link Attraction Factors report (with the accompanying tools, API, and plugin) to my Viral Content Sharing Survey report. I’ve also taken this behavioral data and distilled it into more actionable items like a viral marketing checklist, viral seeding requirements, and of course the 10 symptoms of highly viral WordPress themes.
Out of this research has grown my latest project, the ProtoViral WordPress theme. Built to be flexible design-wise, it allows you to customize it to match the look and feel you need, while including a wide range of flexible and powerful viral marketing features built right into the theme. I’ve…
reddit_url=”http://danzarrella.com/the-importance-of-social-proof-for-contagious-blogging.html”
In 2007 the Washington Post conducted an experiment. They had one of the best musicians in the world to play one of the most expensive instruments in the world (a $3.5 million Stradivarius violin) on a subway platform during morning rush hour. Most people simply ignored him, “the final haul for his 43 minutes of playing was $32.17. Yes, some people gave pennies.”
There were no tuxedos or playbills or expensive tickets. No sold out concert halls or rave reviews from jaded critics. Just some of the best music in the world, but without the social cues to the quality of the performance, nobody noticed.
So even if you’re the best writer in the world, writing on a world-class web…
digg_url = “http://danzarrella.com/10-symptoms-of-highly-viral-wordpress-themes.html”;
Blogs are my favorite CMS for “going viral.” Cheap, easy, expandable, everything you could want. But when you’re launching a blog and your goal is going to be lots of social media and viral traffic, you’ll need to make sure you pick the right theme. Here are a list of 10 things your theme must have to “go viral.”
1. Social Buttons
Most blogs these days have the sociable plugin, so that there is a list of social sites at the bottom of every post that allow readers to submit and vote on the post. For real traction, you need to do better than these teeny little buttons. Put big, honkin’ voting buttons on every post on your site. For…
submit_url = “http://danzarrella.com/9-scientific-ways-to-make-every-post-more-contagious.html”;
I’ve spent the last year or so doing research into the history, sociology, statistics, psychology and mathematics of information sharing (many of the posts I’ve done about this stuff are over in my sidebar under “Protoviral”). I’ve found a number of reccuring elements across areas of study, so here are some of the bits I’ve learned that you can apply to almost any blog post to make it more viral.
1. Ask for the Share
This can kind of sound cheesy, but believe me it works. Respondents to my Sharing Survey reported a bunch of triggers you can pull to convince people to spread your content including utility (share this with your friends who might find it useful) and “they-might-miss-it” (show…
Once you’ve decided you’d like to create a viral marketing campaign, its easy to become too focused on the details, and miss the forest for the trees, but a good campaign is the integration of a lot of parts. Here’s a quick checklist to make sure you haven’t missed anything.
Goals Have you defined your campaign’s goals? Do you know what you’re trying to do (in an actionable and quantifiable way) and have you identified the metrics you will use to identify success? Keep in mind that certain, identifiable and targetable types of users tend to be more prolific in spreading content, be sure to target these people.
Vector Research Have you identified the demographic you’d like your campaign to “go viral” in and…
digg_url =”http://danzarrella.com/viral-content-sharing-survey-report.html”;
Finally, after sneak peeks and status updates, the report is done.
Its a study of why and how people share content online and it explores content type preferences, sharing methods, motivations, reach and frequency.
You can check out the table of contents here.
If you like the report, don’t forget to follow me on Twitter.
Here’s a few more sneak peek graphs from the report about the preferences of respondents who frequently read social news sites (like Digg):
And as always, I’d love to hear what you think.
My survey on web content sharing collected around 450 responses and now I’m working on the task of decoding the type-in answers and calculating the results.
I asked the question on twitter, but I’d also like to ask it here, what formats would everyone like to see the results in? I’ve already had suggestions of: spreadsheet and slideshare in addition to the normal graphs-in-a-blog-post format. Any other awesome ideas?
Update: Its also been suggested that I do a downloadable PDF version of the report, like I did with the Link Attraction Factors report.
