In a hyperconnected society like the one we live in, brands continually bombard us with advertising. However, making viral social media posts is not as easy as it looks.
A person can receive up to 5,000 advertising impacts daily, more than half of which we don’t even remember. Currently, many of these impacts are received through social networks. Since we invest more than 3 hours a day in these types of platforms, can you imagine the number of messages that we absorb directly or indirectly during all of that time?
Therefore, for your brand to be one of the few that leaves a mark on users, the content you publish has to be of quality, interesting, fresh, and impactful. Today we are going to focus on how to make your content on Instagram go viral.
We will reveal these strategies in the following points:
Do you know what your audience is like?
You have to know your potential clients well. What are they looking for? What interests them? Why are they interested in your product or service? At this point, it is very important to know how to interact with them, get them to trust you, the brand, and thus be able to get the most out of the campaign.
What message do you want to convey?
Once your audience is identified, you have to be spot on with the message to be transmitted. It must be clear, concise, allow for few questions, and of course, be attractive. Also, in accordance with your target audience’s socio-demographic characteristics such as emotions, age, gender, cost of living, etc.
Related to this aspect, the tone with which you address your followers is very important. It is very different to talk with teenagers about a video game, as opposed to targeting fathers and mothers about going back to school.
Move your post
Add links, share on Facebook or other social networks, and even promote your post on Instagram itself; the secret is that you have to give the post the greatest possible visibility.
#Hashtag
Here, it is useless to put a block of typical hashtags like #tbt or #picoftheday. It has to be an attractive enough hashtag to be used. It must be short, simple, related to your brand, and easily memorable over time.
This is not a simple task, but if you find the most suitable hashtag for your brand, you can attract new customers and increase brand recognition. One example is Ben & Jerry’s use of the hashtag #Fairtweets in a campaign they launched in 2012 to highlight the importance of Fair Trade Day.
Influencers
Making use of the influence and credibility of these people can be very useful when making a post on your profile, in addition to the large volume of impacts that you can have thanks to the promotion by that person. Obviously, the influencer is chosen and must be on board with the product line or service you offer because if not, they will not be credible. If you want to know how to find influencers, you can read more here.
Address social or environmental issues
Awareness messages are always a good starting point to turn a post into a viral one. People are increasingly aware of climate change. A clothing brand tentree is a good example of a brand who has used this technique. As soon as they opened their account, they posted a photo of the environment saying that they will plant a tree for every “like” they receive on their post, resulting in almost 16 million likes.
Currently, the brand has more than 2 million followers. This is because of the virality of this first post.
Giveaways
Giveaways attract a lot of attention from your potential clients. There are conditions or possibilities of participation (such as tagging a friend or sharing stories) these contests tend to exponentially expand the reach of your brand. Also, it allows you to reach users who did not follow you, or that didn’t even know you.
If you do it well, you can get that post to go viral easily, like Ron Barceló and his widely known annual festival, Desalia, where, in addition, to give tickets to a large number of invited influencers, they raffled tickets among their followers.
Make it a very visual content
Whether they are videos, photos, or photos on a carousel, they have to be of high quality since Instagram is the most visual of all existing social networks. The angles, lighting, color, and sound are very important for maintaining consistency among all of the feeds. This will ensure that, visually, the public’s attention is attracted. A clear example is the Men’s Health magazine’s Instagram, which uses short videos to attract the public.
