Viralizing Your Visual Content

As a business owner who generates content professionally, your ultimate goal (besides selling your products and/or services) is to get  your content to go viral. Of course, you are the one person who is not able to make that happen directly. You need to find a way to get other people to share it and promote it.

Getting other people to invest in your content by sharing it

There are several different approaches that you should consider taking in order to get that to happen. As you are deciding on your strategy, you should think about the fact that people will react differently to static images than they will to animated or interactive images. Additionally, they will react differently to color versus black and white and horizontal versus vertical. As you are formulating your strategy, you owe it to yourself and your business to consider everything and to weigh the options that are in front of you so that you make the best decisions for your business.

• Wrap your mind around what motivates your target audience to share your content: Your content (which will either contain all words or be a combination of words and visual images) will affect people but the question is whether it will affect those people strongly or mildly. If it affects them mildly, they may approve of the content that you have shared but that does not necessarily mean that they will be willing to share it with other people whom they know and trust. That content is at a higher level and that is definitely a level to which you will want to aspire. If your content invokes a reaction where your target audience members feel compelled (or even inclined) to share, you have done something very right and you need to make sure that you know what you did so that you can keep on doing it. It is critical to your success that you determine exactly what your objectives are before you share any content at all. If you can pinpoint what those are, you can drive the process to a large extent.

• Figure out exactly what type of content gets people to share it with other people: When it comes to visuals, some images touch people more profoundly than other images. There are pretty much two types of content about which people will react and they affect people on an emotional level. They are appreciation content (they contain images of celebrities, images that contain people, and portraits of people). The other type of visual content is self-expression visual content (that type contains interactive gifts, images of animals, and images of food). Those types of images affect people emotionally and if your intention is to get people to share your content, you will appeal to a large number of people and you have a good chance of getting them to want to share your content.

• Get a clear understanding of the reactions that your target audience members will have from content that contains only words and content that has a combination of words and visual images: The reaction that your target audience will have to each of those types of content will be very different and very interesting. If you share words-only content, your target audience will share words-only content. On the other hand, if you share content that contains a combination of words and visual images, those other people will be inclined to share the same thing with the people they know and trust. Of course, it is important for you not to lose site of the idea that the quality of the content that you are sharing has everything to do with other people’s willingness to share it with other people they know.

• Understand what visual content to use to invoke the best reaction from others: If you can pinpoint the most effective visual content for your particular business, you will definitely be one step ahead. The important aspect to which people will react include horizontal versus vertical and static versus interactive or animated. People will really react to those and you should try to experiment with those aspects of your visual content as soon as  you possibly can. Also, remember to optimize your content to the best of your ability and pay close attention to metrics, as always.

Conclusion

With this new approach to your content (content that contains words and visual images), you will start to see a positive difference in the way that your target audience members react to what you are trying to give to them. Before you know it, they will feel the need to share  your wonderful content with their colleagues, friends, and family. Of course, as you are thinking about your content, make sure that it is always timely and relevant to your target audience so that it holds their interest. If you keep it fresh and surprise them with amazing content on a regular basis, how could they not want to share it?