Many Businesses wants their social media posts to be unique and special, to stand out of the box, to have the very best post that will bring them lots of views and that people will instantly fall in love with their product. That’s the dream isn’t it? However, I would argue that most companies aren’t willing to take the risk to be all that different.
According to Seth Godin, the thing that what gets people talking and how virality starts for it to be remarkable. Things out of the ordinary that will get people REMARKING or basically giving their comments, thoughts and opinions. But in order to do so, companies need to give freedom to their employees to be creative instead of sticking to the status quo which most companies tend to do.
According to Business matters magazines, 81% of workplaces have failed to inspire workers’ creativity. In fact, in the same report 1 in 5 employees believed that business leaders didn’t want to hear their ideas and 15 percent of people believed that their business leaders actively discouraged innovation. This is worrying and if business leaders continue to kill innovation and creativity how then can businesses even hope to be viral?
This post is for all the business leaders out there that WANT to kill their chances in viral marketing. So if that is your aim, follow this list closely, if not then AVOID THIS AT ALL COSTS.
1.Marketing to the majority of people
When you market to the early majority and the late majority, they are the biggest market segment of your product. However according to Seth Goldin, the ones that really start virality are the Innovators and the early adopters as early adopters and innovators are the ones that will truly spread your message and product. In fact, according to Informationweek, early adopters tend to be opinion leaders that will spread your product and message more widely.
These 2 groups the innovators and early adopters are looking for two thing. Innovation and how does the product that you are selling help them. If creativity is stifled, we will never be able to specifically reach out to these 2 groups of people thus essentially killing off viral marketing.
2. Demanding immediate returns.
Some things don’t go viral immediately. In fact, the double rainbow video that went viral having more than 46 million views, only went viral 6 months after the video was posted. Proving that marketing and creativity takes time to come into full effect. Demanding too much out of marketers to produce virality is a daydream even for top PR firms according to forbes. Marketing is a risk and there are no guarantees, there are only so many things that go viral everyday and managements have to trust that their marketers are doing the best they can.
3. Providing no support
A supportive office environment and company culture is crucial for nurturing creativity and virality. A company should not punish employees even if their ideas fail. According to vivid resources, the quickest way to destroy creativity is for employers to rub failed ideas in to marketer’s faces. This will create an internal environment that will kill creativity and make a middle of the road marketing team.
Overall, virality starts in the office and the company culture. There are many articles on the internet telling marketers how to create viral content however before success, know what you should avoid doing to fail.
Marketing in the Digital Age 
Wow thank you for your insightful review. Indeed many websites are telling us how to go viral but yours is the first post I’ve seen that tells me how not to go viral and how so many other companies are doing it the wrong way.
This post really resonates well with me and I’m glad I read it. Will be sharing with other people as well! Have an amazing day!
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Thank you Emillia! I’m so glad I enlightened you, hope you enjoyed reading my posts! Do continue sharing my site with others!
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Wow once again great article, companies want to go viral but bog down their staff with rules and timelines when the truth is, that these rules and all they can hardly be creative and do the best they can. Thank you Marvin for sharing your insights on what not to do in a company so they can have a chance of being viral! It has really opened up my eyes!
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Hi Henry! Thank you for your comment! I hope that companies can allow creative space for its employees in the future on a wider scale! I thank God that my company really allows me to do as such!
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Hi, great post! I personally also feel that emotions and story telling can kill virality. Emotions are vital in viral content as it links to how consumers resonate with it. If the content is sad, people can relate, if its happy, people can relate. However, if the content has a mixture of the bipolar emotions or worse still not portraying any form of emotions, it can definitely kill virality.
Also, a good story keeps people staying and actively participating. Hence if the content doesn’t portray a good story, highly likely people are going to move on. Do you think its true?
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Hi Vincent! Yes, I think it is true that a good story really do help people to connect more with the brand! Content focusing is really relevant in what we do but I guess that’s up to the marketer that is handling it! That’s why companies should also hire competent marketers as well!
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I agree that some videos require time to go viral. This is evident in the Youtube community where some videos only get recommended a few months later, and the views shoot up in a short period of time. It takes time for effects to come through, hence some businesses will have long-term marketing, where they advertise their campaigns over an extended period of time. Good insightful article, thumbs up!
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Hello Esther! Thank you for your comment! I hope that you really learnt something! Virality is a hard thing to measure in terms of time so yes it’s pretty difficult to measure when something will really go viral! Cheers!
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Hi Thanks for such an insightful post on virality! I completely agree with you that virality starts with the company culture. Companies like Google allow their employees to work freely which then permits them to let their creativity and innovation flow, thus generating novel and appropriate ideas . In addition, managers are also an important part of this culture as bad leadership is the biggest obstacle for employees to share their creative ideas. Cheers!
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Hi Marcus! Yes, it all starts with leadership! Good leaders want to bring out the best in their employees and from there, employees build the company and serve the customers. Cheers!
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Viral content should go viral the organic way.
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Hi Fabian! I do agree that viral content should go viral organically! However, I do see nothing wrong in advertising by using pay per click and search engine advertising! Cheers!
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