Viral traffic is the goal of every online marketer, no matter the niche.
With viral traffic, you are getting fantastic exposure for your brand, you’re making new connections, and you are increasing your sales as a result.
The problem is how to create that viral traffic. If anyone could do it, everyone would.
To start, you need to create great content. Without the content, no one has a real reason to visit your site until they are absolutely ready to buy.
There’s no magic formula for viral content, but here are a few tips for how to create successful posts that drive traffic:
Tell Stories
The most effective way to engage users is to tell stories.
It doesn’t matter what kind of products or services you sell. You can create a story around them.
For example, if you are in a relatively dense or dull niche like asphalt paving or risk management, you can still tell stories. Write a post about how you discovered a special blend of concrete that helped you solve a problem and save money, such as a cold-winter mix that no longer cracks and crumbles. For risk management, tell a story about how a homeowner or business owner improperly calculated a risk and paid the price.
Telling stories brings issues to life for readers, and it makes them feel more emotionally connected to what you have to say. Find ways to tell stories about your product or service, and you’ll not only get more readers, but also more shares and engagement on your posts.
Be Playful
Straightforward, informative content is dry and dull.
No matter what your niche, you need to find ways to be playful in your writing or presentation of the information. Otherwise, you will lose readers fast.
You need to inject your content with personality! Be funny. Use puns or other plays on words. Make funny asides. Refer to pop culture.
The lighter and more playful your content can be, the more engaging it will be. Just make sure you don’t tip the scales too far in the other direction and make readers doubt your sincerity or authority.
Share Strong Opinions
You need only look at the meteoric rise of Donald Trump to see how effective sharing strong opinions can be.
People just don’t react as well to a nuanced discussion that explores all the finer points of an issue. There are resources for those kinds of discussions, and they are usually on academic sites.
Instead, people want to hear your opinions in unequivocal terms. You may lose some readers who disagree strongly with you, but you’ll gain the fierce loyalty of those who agree.
You can be almost hyperbolic when sharing your opinions. Don’t just say that you think homeowners should aerate their lawns for the best results — say that it’s the most important thing they can do for lawn health or that they are putting their homes in jeopardy if they don’t.
Just make sure that you don’t make any claims that could land you in legal trouble or undermine your authority.
Be Inspirational
People love to be lifted up, and if you can inspire them, you will cause them to engage with your content and share it with others.
Mine your own business history for inspiration where you can find it, such as customers who got huge results with your product or employees who achieved something extraordinary as a result of hard work or innovation.
If you fall short, just look online and you’ll never run out of ideas. Search your niche for stories about regular people doing extraordinary thing and find a way to relate that back to what you are offering.
Share Personal Stories
Business copy is business like, and most people don’t respond to it.
They want to know who you are behind the content — and not just your brand persona. They want to know about the people who are creating the content.
Some of the best brands are successful because they share personal stories. Penelope Trunk is a career coach and entrepreneur who writes about topics like SEO and passive income, but she always finds a way to couch those lessons in personal stories about her life. For example, she talks about her obsessive behaviors when flying first class in order to explain the types of traits you have to have to be a successful entrepreneur.
How can you share personal stories to bring the information you want to share to life? The more vulnerable you are, the more engaging your content will be. You just need to weigh how what you are revealing will impact your brand persona and your business goals.
Viral content is engaging by being funny, personal, or inspirational. There are other ways to engage customers, such as by positioning your content on the right channels and in the right formats, but writing good content is the best place to start.
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