The viral marketing class you wish you’d taken — in 3 minutes
Viral videos to inspire you.
Dr. Dustin York is an adjunct professor at the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications.
Dr. Evan Kropp is executive director of Distance Education at the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications.
As marketing educators, it is literally our jobs to stay abreast of the latest developments, curate them and teach busy professionals like yourselves how to ride the waves of change instead of getting deluged by them. To save you time, here’s a small handful of strategies taken straight out of our graduate course on viral marketing at the University of Florida, “The Science of Going Viral,” that enabled our students to understand the principles behind videos that get big views. While it isn’t a replacement for the full course, consider it a cheat sheet that you can use to start going viral today.
- Make content experiential
Don’t have your audience just read or watch your content passively. Invite and challenge them to experience and interact with it and, even better, to do it collectively with others as a social experience. Think the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.
This is what one of our students, Peyton Roberson, did as social media manager for Tate Law Group in Savannah, Georgia. Her video gained over 12 million views by stitching a previous video posted by content creator Kelley Lorraine (see strategy #3, familiarity, below) and having people at her workplace take the #broomchallenge, with hilarity ensuing when her then-boss, attorney Mark Tate, failed in multiple attempts. The caption accompanying the video reads, “Can you do it?? 🤔🤔” which invites and challenges viewers to take the challenge too and triggers their curiosity (“I wonder if I can do it?”), which is in itself another element of virality.
- Timing is everything
Posts that are timely are exponentially more likely to go viral. But timely in what way, exactly? It’s not so much about being topically timely, necessarily, but about taking advantage of what’s trending. This is what our student did with her aforementioned broomstick challenge by stitching Lorraine’s original video just three days after it had been posted. When you see something trending that inspires you with an idea, the sooner you act on that idea the better your chances of going viral. This means that part of your daily task as a viral marketer must be to constantly keep your eyes and ears peeled for what’s trending: which creators, which hashtags, which songs, which everything.
If your role is that of a decision maker, giving advance approval to your social media person or team to jump on trends they come across can be a rewarding move since waiting for approval wastes precious time and can mean the difference between going viral and not.
- Familiarity breeds success
Familiarity might breed contempt but in social media marketing it breeds virality. It’s been said that novelty is what drives virality and while this is partly true, viral content is often a mixture of novelty and familiarity. Going back to the #broomchallenge example, the novelty in our student’s video lay in watching a dapper, high-status owner of a law firm attempting the broom challenge and looking adorably ridiculous in the process. But the video also took advantage of the preexisting familiarity of influencer Kelley Lorraine’s previous video.
Familiarity can also come in the form of comments on your videos as when a video by another one of our students, Megan Foley, elicited comments from well-known brands Arby’s and CAVA as well as social media influencer Allison Kuch. Familiarity in this form can provide huge algorithmic boosts to your content. Familiarity also occurs when other videos stitch or piggyback off your own, especially if they’re from influencers and celebrities, as when NFL player Keon Colemean stitched our student’s #broomchallenge video
@keoncoleman1 Capppp😂😂😂😂#fyp
Viral videos from the class
These strategies are compounding and self-reinforcing. What this means is that familiarity, timeliness and being experiential all work together synergistically to dramatically increase the likelihood of going viral. Here are the top three viral videos from our class and a tip for you to apply each video’s key strategy yourself:
- More than 1M views:
@megannfoley FOLLOW ALONG MY SEMESTER!!! #uf #viral #socialmedia #school #gradschool #million
The first viral video occurred in just Week 1. This video leaned into the community of the internet, letting users have power in the situation. This student also remained incredibly active in the comments, adding momentum to the growth.
How can you apply this strategy? Empower your community. Get them involved to root for you and engage with them throughout the process.
- More than 1M views:
@the_pubhub Does every publix take 15 minutes to make 1 PubSub or is it just mine? #publix #deli #slow #pov #promoted #MemeCut #chiefskingdom #kansascitychiefs #Meme #superbowl
This video went viral for quickly jumping on a trending meme and relating it to a geographically significant brand.
How can you apply this strategy? Use social listening to find trending internet topics with agile production to create content quickly.
- More than 12M views:
@tatelawgroupllc Can you do it??🤔🤔. #steppingoverbroom #tiktokchallenge #broomchallenge #lawyersoftiktok #funnymoments
Although at first glance, this strategy may seem like riding the wave of another internet trend, the true spark was the “character.” The lawyer in the video kept viewers’ attention through a longer than normal TikTok, thus increasing the algorithmic reach.
How can you apply this strategy? People are too complex to explain on social media. Build a “character” that people want to watch.
Congratulations! You’ve just completed a mini-graduate class on virality. Do you now know everything there is to know about the topic? Far, far from it — this is just the tip of the iceberg. But you now have a solid basis for experimenting, quite possibly going viral and having some fun in the process. And you did it in just 3 minutes.
