Viral Communication research

Viral Communication research

To help me understand how something becomes viral I will research into how past medias became a viral communication and analyzing what makes them successful. 

To begin with though I need to point out the key differences between commercial viral medias and non commercial medias. What I mean by this is the difference between big advertising brands taking advantage of sending media out through there big budgets and production advantages they have over solo non commercial campaigns or medias. 

A good comparison would be the shetland pony advert produced by mobile network three (commercial big budget advert). This advert was only aired in the UK but due to youtube accounts streaming the video and people spreading the advert through social media sites like Facebook and twitter it became a global virally communicated video. This highlights the importance of social media and how it aids communication too a wider audience, all it takes is a video to be shared on Facebook or liked on twitter and a friend see's it and re-tweets and re-shares it and it can spiral on from there. In this instance the reason why this video became viral was because of the comedy factor and the fact "socks" the pony was actually a real shetland pony. 

The reason why this became so viral was in my opinion due to the abstractness of the concept, a dancing pony has no relevance too three so it wasn't really seen as an advertisement as such. It was seen as just a comedy youtube video, and I feel this comical tone is what aided its success. 
http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Sharing_stuff/Dance_Pony_Dance_the_story_behind_the_commercial

Moving away from commercial media campaigns that went viral to non commercial "home movie" viral medias. The most popular example would be this video that again like the shetland pony ad has a comical value too it but not for promotion purposes. This video has over 660million hits on youtube and shows how something so simple can create such a viral communication without the use of big budgets, promotions and a big company name behind them. This is a try example of how successful viral media can really be. 

One reason I think this was so successful is due to the fact of its "cuteness" the Evian water advert proved how using babes and children can be extremely beneficial for promotions and creating high impact advertising campaigns. 

A controversial campaign backed by the "invisible children" charity demonstrated the power of social media exposure through its campaign to stop Joseph Kony a Ugandan warlord from carrying on kidnapping children to use for his army in Africa. The campaign video itself mentions the high volume of people who use social network sites and is basically calling out for the use of these social network sites to spread the word of this political issue. Although initial public response was strong I feel overall the campaign failed. And here is why. 

It did just that with over 100million views in a week from the original release, the campaigns original plan was to promote the "cover the night" movement, were people purchased a pack of posters and stickers (All proceeds went to the charity to help the children's who were victims of Konys reign) and blanked there cites by illegally fly posting stop Kony posters around there cites. The reason the initial response was so successful in terms of video shares was the shock factor, of the video. It played on the viewers emotions through sinister tone of voice and upsetting scenes of children made people want to help out even more. 

The intention of this movement was too "pressure governments into hunting down the guerrilla leader, who has waged a brutal, decades-long insurgency in central Africa.". Although even though they had such success with the digital media boom and sharing of the video there was a very poor turn out for the cover the night movement. This kind of showed his disposable and trend driving people can be with these viral medias, they never really took heed of the movement, they basically just liked and shared the video to be part of the huge movement of people making the video viral. They never really made effort to leave there house and take the movement forward, this is an example of an unsuccessful campaign that didn't go to plan so much. 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/21/kony-2012-campaign-uganda-warlord

I really do see social media and digital medias are the best way in which a campaign can be spread. Things used to be spread by word of mouth, by gossiping and conversation but this is more done through the digital age now. Social media is the way in which things is passed on through word of mouth, and the method in which it is delivered and shared is equally digital like the above examples of youtube videos been the primary method of communication. 

Viral medias don't always have to communicate something though. Viral contents can come from a variety of medias, iPhone apps and games that are increasing in popularity now. They also link with social media and the sharing of content. 

One example of this could be seen as the photo sharing app instagram. Starting off small and growing into something that is now owned by Facebook (hence social media merge) the app has elements inspired by the viral "hashtag" used to tag your photos so people can find photos under the categories they search and you can have a group of friends or "followers" on it.

Viral media can be seen in games too, the game angry birds was a huge hit, a simply produced game that due to the viral popularity of it stemmed off into something a whole lot more. Merchandise was produced, This shows how something so simple can lead into something a great deal larger and diverse into different markets attracting yet more target markets that could send that content viral within that subcategory. 

How can content be made viral?

From what I have researched I feel there are a few main aspects that need to be addressed to make content viral.

Concentrating on public trends would be a key thing.

Playing on the viewers emotions through the tone of voice of content. Be it positive or negative emotions by either informing them, promoting something, educating someone, entertaining them, explaining something or engaging with them through interactivity.

Make use of social media sites for promoting the campaign or movement we intend on creating. 

Be unique and abstract, don't make a literal outcome for the content. Think out of the box like the shetland advert used to advertise a phone company. 

After looking into how to make something go viral I found that the following need to be considered.

Trends, as mentioned trends are important. When people search on google, Facebook, twitter etc you have better chance of been viewed if the content you create is "trending".

Make a video, youtube and Vimeo are the most popular video sites with tie in links to Facebook if you produce something that people like it could be shared to thousands if not millions of people. 

Pay attention to keywords and tags, if you want your content to be discovered through searching of social media and search engines make sure the texts included in the content or the tags are relevant and concise so they can be found easy within the search.

Try get noticed by a celebrity, although this is difficult a celebrity has a huge fan base. If you can get a share, retweet or a mention from a celebrity your exposed to an already existing fan base. Much like how big advertising firms continue to be successful, they already have there audience sector there for them. 

Use humor, as mentioned playing with emotions is a good way to get people in on your concepts. People love to be made laugh, and as the pony advert and the charlie bit my finger video proves. Comedy works for viral communication.

Like the Kony campaign, be shocking and controversial. The content shared doesn't always have to be liked, bad publicity is still publicity intact it could even become more viral due to how shocking and hated it is . But obviously stay within certain rules as not to offend too much. 

Be visual, you need to stand out. The attention span of the average web surfer or browsing audience is getting shorter and shorter, high impact, bold photographs, GIF,s anything that can catch the eye will prove effective at drawing people in. 

http://webtrends.about.com/od/howtoguides/tp/How-to-Go-Viral-Tips-For-Going-Viral.htm