How much work does going viral take?
I like being flattered as much as the next social media expert. [I’m not a guru by the way].
And responding promptly to media enquiries is best practice.
Here’s an example of a social media agency running a project which wasn’t quite what I expected. Learn from my mistakes.
Anatomy of a viral social campaign
When Claire Divas approached me the request was nicely written.
I suspect English is not her first language – copywriting for sales success is a course she could usefully complete. That apostrophe is a killer giveaway as is the word eager – which is commonly used in Indian English. And it turns out it is not “her” site, it’s an agency business.
I’m doing an Expert’s Roundup interview on my site and I believe social media enthusiasts and specialists would be eager to know your answer to this question:What Are The Effective Tips For Online Business To Get Viral On Social Media?
It looked good. On topic and the right audience of enthusiasts. Going viral with a post about going viral seemed like a nice proposition.
Turns out I’m one in 130+ people quoted
Does it betray trust to find you are hard to pick out in a crowd? Who will actually read one hundred and thirty different so-called experts advice?
So how did the campaign plan look
- Write to a lot of people with a simple request
- Set up a form to collect their answers
- Curate images and biography information
- Send chasing emails.
- Write a summary article with a catchy title.
- Tell everyone what you’ve done
So far so good. You can copy this campaign structure.
Put the reader first
The scope of the campaign structure is good – best practice.
The selection of experts is diverse. And this is where the problems start.
Think about the reader – I think that she will find it hard to get value from what’s written here. It’s too diverse, too broad and you have to trawl through a lot of content to find that one snippet of “gold” that will answer your question.
Self-evidently Trollishly [hideous name btw] want a lot of people to promote and link to their content [that’s a no-follow link].
And that will give them a ton of good SEO and incoming links and publicity as people quoted amplify their message to their audiences.
What I got wrong
What irritates me is that I didn’t ask the right questions of Trollishly and of myself at the start of the project.
- How many experts will be quoted?
- How many people in your audience are B2B
- Will the links be do-follow back to my website and social profiles?
- Will this audience become businesses prospects for me?
- What is the ROI on my time?
Rebecca’s advice on the shared expert post
I fell for their pitch. I didn’t qualify the opportunity well enough.
And look at what they published – the pink circled website and social media details of my business are an image – not hyperlinked at all. So going viral is not what they actually delivered for me.
I feel exploited….
P.S. I could have found much of this out with a little research. The menu items on their website include “Buy Instagram likes”. Tells me everything I need to know about the quality of their business.