Not all quality contents go viral but one thing is sure, all viral contents have unique and in-depth qualities. To create a viral content one must consider all the factors that can lead to virality during the content creation stage.

The virality of content is mainly about the content quality among other factors. It is the dream of every blogger to get their posts in front of the largest possible audience, but that doesn’t happen always. The good news is that there are lots of things you can do to ensure you have a chance of creating a viral content.

In this article today, I want to take a look at the factors that can lead to virality of contents. Almost every successful blogger has applied these factors in their content creation strategies. So if you want to create a viral content, I will advise you try same.

What is Viral Content?

First, let me explain what viral content simply means. When we say a content has gone viral it simply means that it’s been seen by a large number of people in a very short amount of time. The term content virality was borrowed from the way viruses quickly overtake the human body by their ability to rapidly reproduce.

So when content gets seen by as many people as possible over a short period of time, it is said to have gone viral. So the big question is what factors can make content go viral? I will try and explain some of these factors in the next section.

“Virality can be defined as the tendency of an image, video, or piece of information to be circulated rapidly and widely from one Internet user to another; the quality or fact of being viral.”

What are some content virality factors?

While there are no certain tricks to make every content go viral, there are some reasonable factors that contribute to the virality of content. Any great content is capable of going viral if some steps are taken to ensure such.

1. Is it worth sharing?

Investigating all viral contents, I have identified a common factor for their virality. One thing all viral contents have in common is “Share worthiness”. In an earlier article I published on this blog titled “How to get people to share your posts on Social Media”, I identified about 6 factors that could make people share a post. If you wish to create viral contents, then create contents that are worth sharing.

2. Does it directly appeal to its readers?

Posts that invoke emotions tend to get shared more. After reading viral posts, I take some time to investigate what could’ve lead to its virality. Often times I have discovered that invoking emotions such as joy, sadness, anger, amusement, laughter etc seems to trigger people into sharing such contents.

People share what they find funny to amuse their friends. In the psychology of social media shares, people tend to share contents they find valuable and entertaining. So while creating your content, always consider people’s feelings because its virality may depend on how it makes people feel.

3. Quality, Length, Depth & Details:

One more thing all viral contents have in common is quality and length. All viral contents offer great in-depth, well-researched insights. People will easily share a well structured article with great details but the hardest part of writing long content in to keep up the quality throughout the whole article.

So the next time you are planning on writing a post that can go viral on the internet, I suggest you cover every aspect of that topic while maintaining quality throughout the post.

4. Type of content:

I went further to see what content formats tend to go viral easily and discovered post types such as lists, infographics, how-to articles, ‘what’ posts, ‘why’ posts and videos tends to get shared more often.

Another type of posts that get attention easily on the internet are those that have negative words in their title such as “Stop,” “avoid,” “don’t,” etc.

Let’s take a look at two post titles;

“10 smartphones to buy in 2014” and “10 smartphones to avoid in 2014“.

Which do you think people will tend to read and share more? Contents with negative words in its title tend to trigger a certain type of feeling that make people want to read it.

5. Images in content:

Images are also another content virality factor that cannot be ignored. Posts with images seem to be seen and shared more than those without images. Visually compelling images tends to increase engagement on contents.

People on average share posts with at least one image in it, underscoring the importance of having visual elements mixed in with bodies of text. The presence of an image in a post can appeal to people to share such post on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

In Closing:

Viral content can’t be predicted or planned but consistently applying these content virality factors and adopting some of the tactics and techniques viral content creators have implemented in the past, you too can create a content that can go viral.

What other content virality factors do you think can make a content go viral? Let me hear what you have to say on the comments below.