Should You Try to Go Viral?

Going viral is the new “thing to do.”  Everyone and their dog wants to go viral. I’ve had a hard time figuring out just how long this phrase has been around, but it must be a relatively recent thing, because I seem to recall that not too long ago, “going viral” meant that you needed a trip to the clinic.

Today going viral generally refers to viral marketing, wherein a brand creates something, usually a piece of content, which is then spread by consumers to other consumers, who in turn spread it to more consumers, by means of the internet. Viral marketing is the hip younger sibling of word of mouth marketing, and is usually associated specifically to the web and to content marketing.

The web of today, and even moreso the web of tomorrow, is all about sharing.  Facebook and its 400 million users exist to share the details of mundane lives.  Going viral is all about breaking free of the mundane and doing something remarkable that people will be happy to pass on to each other and say, “Look how cool/funny/crazy this is!”

While this just a guess, I wouldn’t be surprised if the term viral sprang up right around the same time as YouTube.  It used to be, if you had a video worth sharing, you had to get it produced and put on television at significant expense. YouTube allowed anyone to post anything to the web, and to instantly have a potential audience of a hundred million.  There are too many YouTube sensations to mention, but the original ones had nothing to do with business and marketing.  They were just regular people who did something that others thought was worthy of sharing.

It did not take long for the world of marketing to take note, and now every agency worth its salt is trying to put together a viral marketing campaign for its customers.  Producing content is cheap.  Sharing is now made easy.  Every time content is passed along, that’s essentially free promotion.  Why wouldn’t everyone, including SMBs, be doing viral marketing?

The answer to the question of whether you should go viral is easy: Of course.

The answer to the question of how you to go viral is not so easy. There is no magic formula for something to go viral.  Brilliant people have created incredible content and then stopped and wondered why it didn’t go viral. Meanwhile, Pants on the Ground has been viewed six million times.  There is no set way to make something go viral (except possibly for using kittens in your video).  Trying to go viral is kind of like trying to figure out a formula to win the lottery.

The best way to go viral online is to do something that no one has done before. The second person to do something never goes viral.  The first stands a chance.  The first time you see someone make a basket from the opposite side of the court while sitting down is impressive.  The second time is, “been there, done that.”

That rule, however, is nothing new.  Long before the web was a great marketing platform, if you did something that no one had done before, you were going to get attention.  This used to be called publicity stunts.  Now, it’s called viral marketing.  Richard Branson was parachuting into press conferences long before Twitter.  And someone was launching himself out of a cannon long before YouTube.

Therefore, the best advice I can give to any small business that is trying to go viral is this: Instead of trying to go viral, try to be remarkable. Try to do something no one’s done before.  Being remarkable and being the first to do something will have a way of paying off, even if it doesn’t get a million views on YouTube.