Is there any recipe how to create viral content?

It`s a strange thing but this (actually the only important) question is never asked. How to become a genius of viral promotion? Where do the best people in this field take their ideas? Could someone advise me something interesting and not obvious?

It’s an incredibly tricky problem, and it’s one the ad industry spends countless sums of money trying to figure out. I know loads of “creatives” that effectively spend their entire day working on business accounts, trying to come up with adverts and promotions for brands that will “go viral”, and quite frankly I don’t think many of them really know “how” a great campaign goes viral.

It’s one of those subjects that I think we’d struggle to really talk about on this forum. There are some very smart people here, but this is primarily a forum that discusses working as a designer or developer. This question would be much better placed to a community that caters to advertising/creatives.

You can make your content viral by creating something unexpected, something that has an impact and catches your audience. It isn’t your brands or the social media networks that you’re using, it belongs to the people outside your circle of influence. Positive uplifting content always gets shared, remember to keep your focus on a practical content that activates high arousal emotions.

Think in terms of expansion and what gets people excited to share news. Different emotions bring out different reactions in people. Someone is much more likely to share something that makes him/her excited about saving money than something that makes him/her sad talking about dead kittens.

There is no trick to making people share your content, you have to create content that the user enjoys enough to share it with his/her friends.

If you have a budget, there is no better strategy than hosting a large event for journalists; if they have fun, they will usually write positive stories. These sources are where bloggers get their topics, so if you have content that they think their users will like, they will reference it.