Contagious Content: Hidden Patterns of Virality Flashcards
Why should you use remix content?
Remix content gives your content a strong base of the aspects that cause vitality. As long as you don’t change the wrong aspect of the content, you will much more likely go viral than if you started with an original idea/content. ——— Also: Remixing off of something that people have already seen before makes them curious of your content but also makes it easier to adopt it (they don’t have to be convinced from the ground up, instead they are already partially convinced. Note: You can remix more than one type of content together
What are all the types of content
Evergreen Content, Remix Content, Viral Content, Celebrity Content
What kinds of content can be remixed?
Content that has already gone viral Remixing trendy topics Remixing celebrities
Explain the idea of convincing people of things that people are already convinced about
This is similar to how if you talk about a taboo topic and the person listening is already, convinced, they like you so much more and respect you more for it.
What happens even if something doesn’t go viral
even if it doesn’t go viral, it will still attract more attention and get more shares if it has these aspects of virality embedded in them. The sharing and attention grabbing dynamic scales exponentially and it still works at a lower level
Talk about taboo topics
Controversial topics intrigue everyones interest/attention Our ears poke up to see where others stand
Why intrigue people
They will be interested if they want to know the answer Think:
clickbaitey titles that pose a question
Too broad >>>> too narrow –>> more like large group/potential audience >>>> small potential audience
Too broad is only bad if you don’t make it a strong emotion for anyone as a result, but is not inherently bad in and of itself - its just more difficult if you play the wrong game. HOWEVER, the merits are SOOOO high if done right and if done kind of right, it is still pretty high. the problems of being too niche is that even after you do it properly, nothing much will happen anyways. just make something that makes everyone feel strongly and everyone can like/share!!! then the expo effect will be so much stronger too (if you do it correctly) because there are more people that someone can share it to and more people will likely like it if shared too. Think of celebrities and the YouTube trending page. ———- But for things like ads you want to be as specific as possible and then just run multiple adsets because it cost money per share too. Conversion rate + potential size of audience is the key (because if YouTube shows it to too many people that don’t click it’ll lower its show rate.)
Adding a twist to general topics
General topics on their own are already beaten to death however they allow for a lot of people to relate to it and understand most of it. “getting more specific” “explaining a topic from a different perspective” - something that people are interested in seeing themselves
Putting two things together that don’t belong
Things that are unusual or a pattern break makes people super curious to click on something and the more random the more likely for people to want to share it too. Think about the old lady baddy girl that is just so weird and has so much novelty embedded in her content.
Why do people always say to tell stories??
I think it’s because stories are how we’ve always communicated and people always love hearing them. If you tell stories in a emotional captivating way, they are definitely going to make people feel good - THINK ABOUT MOVIES and how people love them so much. People LOVE stories. Underdog stories are always particularly enjoyable of a type of story to tell. EVERYONE loves the underdog stories - I do too, think about how much motivation it gives me and makes me feel good to think about them. A well told story very easily goes viral.
What are the strategies for creating content that will go viral
Is it good to combine different strategies, why and when should you do it?
Yes, it multiplies your odds of success by soooo much.
Make sure to execute them both properly though.
(kind of like how 1 emotion elicited well is much better than 3 elicited poorly)
What are the best practices for social media sites?
