You would think that when a piece of content goes viral, that it pretty much speaks for itself. Do you remember those viral emotional videos from Thailand advertising some sort of life insurance company? Those videos really took Facebook by storm. They really tugged at your heartstrings.

It’s very easy to turn on the waterworks inadvertently when you watch these videos. They are packed with emotions. It’s very easy to sympathize with the characters. A lot of the scenarios that they set up really speak to the human condition regardless of where you come from or regardless of your personal experiences. That’s how powerful they were.

It’s easy to assume that all viral videos are like that. It’s easy to assume that their emotional impact is plane and obvious. Unfortunately, if you think that way, you are assuming too much because, at the end of the day, there are just so many reasons why a piece of content goes viral and another almost identical piece of content doesn’t. It’s anybody’s guess. A large part of it, of course, involves influence networks.

Regardless of the main reason a piece of content is viral and why another piece of content falls flat is the impact on emotions. Online content is never neutral. Even if somebody showed you a very boring article, you can rewrite to spice up whatever controversies or outrages it contains. Believe me there’s always a way to spin otherwise lifeless, dead, dull and boring content into something that would make you want to jump out, scream and pull your hair out.

It really all boils down to presentation and positioning. You have to keep coming back to this because if you’re willing to take viral content at its face value, then you’re basically not selling it right. It may have gone viral before you got your hands on it, but you’re not really doing it any favors by re-sharing it.

If you are not going to turbocharge or otherwise enhance its emotional appeal, you probably would have been better off not messing around with the content in the first place.

So, how exactly do you turbocharge the emotional appeal of viral content?

First of all, you have to reimagine its headline. You can’t just copy and paste that the existing headline of a piece of content. There might be a lot left to the imagination. The original writer might be lazy. Instead, you should just spend some time in coming up with a title that would get people to click.

Also, get people to get so excited about the content that you’re sharing that they would want to stay. Of course, this is the kind of skill set that doesn’t happen overnight. I don’t expect you to become some sort of Madison Avenue professional copywriter in the span of a few hours.

The good news is the more you practice, the better you get. Regardless, you I have to turbocharge the emotional appeal of your viral materials to maximize their marketing benefits to you.


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.