While there isn't any one magic solution to making business content go viral, you should be doing everything you can to create the most shareable content as possible. This includes incentivizing not only your team, but also your customers, to post it on their social networks.
11 entrepreneurs from Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) explain best strategies for doing so without seeming overbearing.
1. Create great content
If you create great content that resonates with your customers and also provides value to their friends and family members (such as a useful statistic, a fun video, actionable promotion, etc.), they will be much more likely to share it. People will share things that they think their network will enjoy and benefit from.
- Diana Goodwin, AquaMobile Swim School
2. Include them in the content
The truth is that people will not throw away or delete anything with their own name on it. Case in point: I still own my grade school art disasters. Do your best to promote client projects alongside your own content. Mention them and tag them in posts. For less involved clients, put an admin in charge of following up via email to say, "Hey! Did you see your project on our social media? Here are the links. Would you please go share it? We want you to get even more promotional value." Another great trick: Recycle the same images again and again while continuing to tag them occasionally. This cuts back on the work required on your end while still getting them to put you first in their mind.
— Nicole Munoz, Start Ranking Now
3. Have them unlock exclusive benefits
Leverage marketing technology to design a system that tracks who is sharing your content and, if they do, what's requested of them. Have them automatically unlock a special discount, report or other benefits as a reward. Chris Brisson developed this software for Infusionsoft users at KillerCampaign.
— Charles Gaudet, Predictable Profits
4. Integrate something your customers are proud of
As a LEGO rental service, our members are building awesome LEGO creations and their parents are proud of their achievements. We have recently started to send an email after every rental prompting them to share their moment of accomplishment with their social networks. We didn’t need to incentivize them too much to see a spike of 270% in content shares. People are inherently willing to share something they spend time doing or are proud of. With each share, we are able to achieve organic advertising and brand awareness.
— Ranan Lachman, Pley
5. Use engaging marketing
Customers are often one and done after the purchase, so it’s vital for you to utilize email marketing and remarketing advertising campaigns to bring customers back to your site to engage in your content. Assuming your content is top notch, open-ended questions will initiate a response and from there readers will be obligated to respond. Social sharing buttons and links are good one-click solutions.
— Pejman Ghadimi, Secret Entourage
6. Make it easy to share with icons
Writing good content or producing an engaging video is a start, but you also need to provide your customers with the tools to actually share the URL. Use a website plug-in such as ShareThis or AddThis. Then be sure to place those little social icons on the top of your articles or sidebar of your blog. I was skeptical at first, but after looking at the data, we discovered that our articles were being shared over 500 times a month thanks to these icons. What you also wouldn't guess is how often people still share by email. In fact, email was the most frequently used sharing function, over Facebook or Twitter.
— David Ciccarelli, Voices.com
7. Focus on value-added content
Your customers are most likely to share value-added content they find useful, entertaining or educational, such as how-to posts and videos, education about putting something together or taking it apart, or content that is fun and enlightening and makes your customers laugh or smile. The key is not to directly sell anything, but instead simply share valuable content. Your primary goal when building content should be to position your company as the de facto resource center for your particular industry; the place where people go to get answers to questions about your product or service. For instance, if you are a plumber you should make how-to videos walking people from start to finish on how to fix common plumbing issues. Customers tend to share content they find most valuable.
— Kristopher Jones, LSEO.com
8. Tag them
One way to get customers to share your content is to tag them. Simply saying something like "@obinnaekezie thought you might like this content on how to find the best travel deals from Nigeria to Dubai" will encourage them to favorite and retweet your content. This strategy also works when prospecting new customers. For instance, use Twitter's search feature to find people looking for your product or service. Once you identify someone looking for your product or service you can tag them and share related content. You can use this process on an ongoing basis to build your follower count and drive more sales to your business.
— Obinna Ekezie, Wakanow.com
9. Gamify the process
One thing I've done very successfully is set up games and a weekly leader board. There is a lot of great content out there, so you have to do something more to stand out. If you make it fun and the underlying content is useful to move your customers' lives further to their goals, then they'll be glad to click that Facebook share button.
— Joshua Lee, StandOut Authority
10. Network with influencers
Connecting with and engaging influencers should be an important part of your social marketing strategy. Having a single influencer endorsing or sharing your content could produce an Oprah Winfrey effect. One strategy that works to get someone's attention is "ego bait." Quote influencers and mention their name in the context of your content. You would be surprised the results this may produce. Influencers might share your mention with their audience, and they may link to your content or follow you.
— Andrew Kucheriavy, Intechnic
11. Give them a compelling call to action
Of course you work hard to create content that speaks to people, and is interesting and relevant to them. Having said that, it will not matter how great the content is if you don’t have a catchy headline with a call to action. What will your content do for the reader/viewer/consumer? Telling them that in the headline will encourage them to share without being asked.
— Elle Kaplan, LexION Capital
Originally posted September 14th, 2015 on Mashable.
