10 viral marketing secrets you wished you always knew!

Aashish Chopra, Head – Content Marketing ixigo, shares 10 viral marketing secrets in the lieu of increasing clutter and competition.

Indian Internet base will be around 730 million by 2020, says a report by Nielsen. This means 700 million news users will get activated as the population moves away from traditional media, consuming content on the internet.

A big opportunity for the ecosystem, however, poses a big challenge as well -  overwhelming content density. How do you make your content stand out, let alone hope it goes viral?

Beat the clutter with authentic and remarkable content opines Aashish Chopra, Head – Content Marketing ixigo. Chopra shares 10 viral marketing secrets in the milieu of increasing clutter and competition.

1. How to make a viral?

You and I cannot make a video viral only audience can. In India, we obsess about results – be it a blockbuster film or exam results. We need to focus on performance and action, rather than results.

Viral is an abused word in the industry. Either you have millions of dollars that you can spend or you’re smart and create the content that your audience wants.

2. How do you pick a topic?

Viral is the outcome, but what can we focus on while creating a video – is it shareworthy? Views can be bought, but engagement and shares cannot be. If the person authentically shares it, he becomes your brand ambassador.

3. Move fast and engage

Average attention span of a human is 3 seconds, when a goldfish’s attention span is 9 seconds. If you see News Feed, where people consume their content, you will see how behaviour is changing. First impression, is the Thumbnail and the second first impression (as he calls it) are the first three to six seconds of a video. In these 6 seconds, we have to get consumers to share it – be quick.

4. Storytelling beats production value

Why? Because you’re making a video for a tiny screen. Production value doesn’t matter on a tiny screen. When you have money and you spend it on production value its fine, but when you’re on a budget, storytelling has to be given more importance.

5. Made for Mobile

Make the video for a mobile native experience. Keep it clutter free. On a tiny screen you can’t expect them to zoom and see that what does the font read? Sensibility of the mobile should be front and centre.

Square format video is native to mobile, they effortlessly blend in your news feed. Since last year, 95 per cent of our videos are square.

6. Distribution Strategy

You can do outreach mailers, write to bloggers, but what’s really important is what we do primarily. Focus on initiation seeding. For instance, we have a benchmark, during the first 10 minutes we need 100 shares on the video. So, how can you get the first 100 shares. Focus on that!

7. Please don’t make an ad

In 90s there was one TV Channel, Doordarshan, we used to sit together watch shows and ads. That is why we still remember those ads. Fast forward to today, whenever we see ads we fast forward. No one cares about your product, it is about them and their happiness. You need to create something authentic that adds value to their life.

8. Think conversation not campaign

Think of topics that can create conversations, that is the space you want to be in. A place where consumers can talk, tag each other and create conversations.

9. Do 10 experiments and two of them will work

Work like a production studio, experiment with content, device, angles, technology and more. Out of 10 videos you will like only two and they’re likely to work.

10. Execution is everything

Ideas can be found or curated, but execution is everything. You could take a repetitive idea and execute it creatively and it would still work. It all boils down to execution.

Viral is an outcome that you can only hope for. In the meantime, focus on creating great content.

Aashish Chopra shared his thoughts at #SMLive, India’s first Facebook Live conference organized by Social Samosa.