In a world where people are spoilt for choice on the content to watch, brands are going out of their way to get noticed. One of the most popular ways they do this is by jumping onto trends. From TikTok challenges like 'TikTok Made Me Buy', Get Ready with Me TikTok trend to Instagram trends like 'Le Freak', there is no shortage of viral trends that brands can jump into.

This can be an effective strategy for enhancing your brand’s visibility and gaining recognition. It can also help you connect with your audience at a deeper level and make your content go viral. However, it also comes with its downsides. One of these is that it can kill your brand’s identity. Focusing on going viral is also not a social media strategy. In this article, we will examine how chasing after trends can harm your brand identity.

How Viral Trend Hopping Can Help Brands

When done right, viral trend hopping can enable your brand to increase engagement on TikTok and remain relevant. When you leverage some timely trends, it makes your brand feel fresh, relatable, and aligned with your audience. It enables you to inject some timeliness and personality into your brand identity.

For instance, when your brand utilizes a popular TikTok challenge or sound, it can experience a boost in interactions and reach, as users tend to engage with viral content. Additionally, when you align with trends, your brand can reach broader cultural conversations. This enables it to have a more contemporary messaging that is aligned with the brand's interests.

According to Convince and Convert data, when brands participate in relevant trends, they can easily connect with their target audience and show their human side. This can result in higher brand loyalty when a viral trend is well-executed.

The Negative Aspects of Chasing a Viral Trend

Despite the positive aspects outlined above, chasing a viral trend can have various engaging elements such as:

Attracting the Wrong Followers

If you have the right people watching your viral trends, then the results can be amazing. However, going after viral trends often results in having passive spectators rather than potential customers. For instance, if you are an executive coach and you post a joke about corporate jargon, this may provide you with followers. Unfortunately, the followers may not be decision makers interested in coaching. Instead, they may just be following you for the jokes. Engagement works when it is about the people who matter to your business.

Loss of Credibility

If your audience realizes that you are only posting to go viral, they will stop trusting you. Imagine a corporate trainer posting a meme about a woman on a beach in a bikini with a dolphin. While that funny joke may increase your views, it might leave you looking less like a thought leader and more like a content creator.

It's also essential to remain consistent in your messaging. If you are jumping from one TikTok trend to another, you can easily lose the authority that has taken you too long to build.

Results in a Burnout

There is no doubt that creating trendy content can be exhausting. Since viral trends don’t usually last long, you will have to keep jumping on the next big trend. You will keep trying to catch up with what is trending every week. You will ask yourself if a particular meme is already dead. At last, you will be left wondering whether you should abandon your entire content calendar.

In other words, trying to hop into a viral trend can be unsustainable. It may leave you distracted from the genuine efforts that help a business grow. From the authentic and strategic messaging, you can speak to the right audience.

How to Stay Relevant When Hopping on a Viral Trend

We already noted that viral trends can increase the visibility of your brand. However, you need to understand how to follow trends and be controlled by them. To avoid getting controlled by trends, consider the following options:

Understand Your Audience

To succeed with viral trends, it is essential to understand your target audience's demographics, including age, gender, race, and location. Once you know these details, it will be easier to focus on trends that appeal to your primary demographics. One way to understand your audience is by asking internally.

For instance, you can have staff members who fit into one of the target demographics. You can ask them questions such as why people in their circles interact with the brand, the kind of content they would like to see you produce, and their pain points. 

If no member of your audience is part of your target audience, you can put the question to your customers. You can ask your social media followers what they love about your brand. Ask them if there is a brand tone they would like to see more of or a product they think would better serve their needs. 

Understanding Your Core Message and Brand Values

Before you get into a trend, you want to ensure that the trend aligns with your brand. For instance, if you are a B2B Saas business, sharing the latest Kanye West drama gossip may look out of place. Similarly, a bank COO doesn't have to post their hot take on job losses resulting from AI simply because that is what everyone else is posting. 

There are several tips to ensure that a trend aligns with your social media trends. This includes:

• Assessing the relevance of the trend. Ensure you only join a trend that is relevant to your audience and aligns with your brand values.
• Analyze the potential for engagement. Check to determine if the trend is meant to foster an interaction with the target demographic.
• Stay authentic. Ensure your brand voice remains consistent, even when you participate in trends.

Every piece of content should align with your long-term content strategy rather than just increasing the number of likes, shares, and comments.

• The ‘finance bro' meme trend can be a good choice for a financial consulting business as it illustrates to their audience the poor investment habits.
• If there is a trending viral law, a legal firm can take advantage of it to explain its impact on small businesses.
• The 10-second attention span trend can be suitable for a leadership coaching business, as it emphasizes the importance of focus in the workplace. 

Trends should be viewed more as a tool rather than a replacement for your brand's voice and values. 

Focus on the Long-term 

Viral trends don't often last long, but authority content does. Instead of getting obsessed with the latest trends, focus on clarity. You can do that by consistently posting valuable content, whether it goes viral or not. 

Ensure you also select evergreen content that will remain relevant and shareable for many years to come. Rather than trying to be the loudest online voice, focus on engaging with your audience. By doing that, you can build trust. Therefore, focus on creating great content that will keep people coming back.

In Conclusion

There is no doubt that brands are doing everything within their means to go viral. At times, they end up changing trends that often affect their brand identity. When that happens, it becomes more difficult for them to establish long-term credibility. 

While viral trends can be tempting to join and may even increase your brand's visibility, it's advisable to focus on establishing sustainable authority that yields real business impact, sustainable growth, and brand authority. To achieve this, focus on creating in-depth content consistently while employing strategic storytelling. After all, the best content is the one that makes people listen rather than the one that gets the most news.

Many social media creators are looking for ways to make their content go viral. However, the truth of the matter is that nobody knows the secret formula and focusing on going viral isn't a good social media strategy. You may have seen a video with millions or hundreds of thousands of views and wondered how it achieved such success.

In viral marketing, brands focus on encouraging website visitors to share a message with other users, thereby increasing the visibility of their pages and sites. In this article, we will review why it's so hard to go viral and what you can do to overcome these challenges.

Why Your Content Isn't Going Viral

There are several reasons why your content may be struggling to go viral. These include:

Hard to Replicate

In epidemiology, “viral” refers to sicknesses that spread fast. But in social media marketing, it's easy to wonder if ideas ever go viral. The fact of the matter is that many brands realize that going viral is so hard. This is probably because it cannot be replicated. In most cases, viral content becomes the darling of the internet for a few days or weeks before it's gone and forgotten, as consumers move on to the next product.

Tons of Content

Anyone can post content on social media. Statistics indicate that the competition on social media can be stiff. For instance:

• Five billion pieces of content are posted every day on Facebook.
• Over 500 million tweets are posted on X daily.
• Over 500 million pieces are posted daily on LinkedIn.

With such a vast number of posts getting created every day, it can be hard for your piece of content to stand out.

Viral Audience Dilution

Different age groups tend to receive content differently from others. According to a study by the Harvard Business Review, Gen Z, aged between 18 and 24 years, exhibit fewer positive emotions compared to older groups. Thus, how one demographic receives your campaign differs from another.

A good idea would be to ensure you are targeting the right audience. Make sure you include target audience analysis in your content strategy. This will provide you with a clear picture of who your target audience is and who they aren't. Avoid over trying to go viral. Even when your post doesn't go viral, don't panic and start sending your campaign en masse, as you will only end up reaching an uninterested audience.

Instead, adopt a content marketing mentality where you begin by determining your target audience before creating content. After you understand who you want to target, you can create engaging and innovative content pieces that resonate with your audience. Maximize the reach of the content through paid ads, email campaigns, and media syndication. If you are lucky, the content may go viral.

Focusing on Going viral and Not Solving Customer Problems

According to a study, only 26% of websites provide content that informs and leads to a sale. Many brands are no longer creating campaigns to help their customers solve problems, but rather focus on brand recognition. This can hurt brand recognition. 

Therefore, if you want to go viral, you want to stop focusing on going viral and instead focus on giving value to your customers. When you do that, your customers will begin to appreciate your content. 

Not Targeting the Right Audience

When brands were asked if their viral campaigns helped to improve their brand reputation, 69% of them responded “no”. Some suggest that it only decreased it. This is why you should invest a significant amount of time in building your brand values and reputation. However, when you focus a lot on going viral, you can easily harm this. 

When you focus a lot on going viral, you chase after clicks, comments, and shares. To increase this engagement metric, you end up trying to create some catchy headlines and turning your content into clickbait.

While viral content can help increase your click-through rate, you can struggle to turn your reached audience into brand fans. This is why brands must focus on creating high-quality content that meets the demands of their audience. According to one study, SMEs with blogs experience 126% more growth than those without. 

Additionally, 61% of online customers buy a product after reading a blog. That means if you are creating a lot of valuable content consisting of videos, blogs, and infographics, you can see far better results. 

Remember that there are no downsides to targeting the right audience. In fact, doing so might just make your content go viral.

The Algorithm

While many creators have the ultimate goal of going viral, the algorithms of some social media platforms have made it hard for them to do so. For instance, if you have only a few videos on YouTube, the platform can make it challenging for those videos to go viral. They want you to have many videos that people can binge-watch on before you can go viral.

On the other hand, LinkedIn will not recommend your content that isn't aligned with your expertise. Therefore, if you are posting a  TikTok viral video on LinkedIn, it will be hard for the content to go viral.

The algorithm also considers several factors to classify your videos and determine whether to display them to prospective viewers. These may include factors such as: 

• Level of saturation of the niche.
• Popularity of the subject matter
• Comparison with other similar videos. 
• Engagement rate of the first audience

If the algorithm is limiting the reach of your audience, it becomes harder for them to be noticed, decreasing their chances of going viral.

Poor Quality Content

If all your content is screaming “share me” with no substance, it will feel forced. Whether it's memes, chasing hashtags, or jumping into challenges, Anything unauthentic will be a turnoff for you and your brand. Therefore, avoid overproducing content with the sole aim of going viral. Instead, focus on content that aligns with your core values. Your content should also offer a solution, a story, or a unique angle that your audience will care about.

Final Thoughts

There are numerous roadblocks to going viral. The most effective strategy for going viral is, therefore, to probably stop trying to go viral. Instead of focusing on content you think may go viral, you need to create content that will solve your audience’s needs. When you do that, combined with the topics in this article, it becomes easier to go viral.

Youtube is an extremely popular platform and like all platforms, Youtube also utilizes Tags to give creators a wider reach throughout the entire platform. It will provide users a wider reach, thus promoting their content to specific groups of people. In this guide we will fully describe how to utilize Tags the best way on youtube and how to add tags to your youtube videos in general. Youtube tags are similar to YouTube services, they will provide you a great supports on your videos and Channel

Add tags to your YouTube videos

Tags are descriptive keywords you can add to your video to help viewers find your content. Your video’s title, thumbnail and description are more important pieces of metadata for your video’s discovery. These main pieces of info will help you as well as viewers to decide which videos to watch. Though tags can be useful if the content of your video is commonly misspelled. Otherwise, tags play a minimal role in your video’s discovery.

Add YouTube video tags

So to add Youtube video tags, it really depends on which videos you want to add it to. If you want to add it to new videos, then sign in to your Youtube Studio and then in the top right corner, click create and then upload video. Select the file that you’d like to upload. In the “Details” section of the upload flow, click MORE OPTIONS and add your tags, on the other hand if you want to add tags to uploaded videos, you must sign in to your youtube studio in the same way you did, described in the previous method of adding tags to new videos. So for uploaded videos after logging in from the left menu select content and select your video, click SHOW MORE and add your tags. You can also obviously edit tags on Mobile in the youtube app.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Why are tags important?

Tags are descriptive keywords you can add to your video to help viewers find your content way easier. That’s why it’s so important

Can tags support my growth on Youtube?

Tags will give you a wider reach in terms of people who might see your content, thus Tags will support your growth on Youtube

Employee advocacy can be a powerful tool for brand growth. According to a recent poll, employee advocacy increased brand awareness by 79% and brand loyalty by 33%. If your brand is not leveraging employee advocacy, it could be missing out on its full potential reach.

With your employees being the most significant untapped marketing resources and the fact that they are already on social media, they can be great brand ambassadors. After all, they have a good understanding of your business, its products and services. In this article, we will look at how you can use employee advocacy to take your brand to the next level.

What is Employee Advocacy?

Employee Advocacy involves employees of a company promoting it on various forums, such as social media, personal networks, and community events. It is a powerful social media marketing method because the employees are already passionate about the company, to the point where they become its passionate brand ambassadors.

Employees can post a wide range of advocacy content and values on their social media accounts, including blog posts, job postings, industry news, and more. While this concept has been around for a long time, social media has helped to popularize it. Unlike in the past, when professionals would meet at networking events to share information about their companies, today's employee advocacy mostly occurs on platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and TikTok. 

This new shift has employees turning into influencers and thought leaders for their companies. At times, the employees may do this on their own accord. At other times, companies may give incentives to their employees or provide support to their employees to build their brands. A well-designed company advocacy program can help amplify a brand's reach and enable it to leverage its company’s trust to boost sales.

Why Employee Advocacy is Quite Effective

This marketing strategy is effective for several reasons, such as:

Higher Level of Trust

There is no doubt that in this social media era, people’s trust in brands has gone down, as they now trust other people more than businesses. When they hear about a brand from their friends or industry peers, they are more likely to trust the information compared to when a brand markets itself.

You will agree that you are more likely to trust information coming from a personal experience or an article written by someone rather than a faceless company, only represented by a logo.

New Source of Business

In our previous point, we noted that employee advocacy can help develop peer-to-peer trust, resulting in a higher level of brand awareness and increased self-esteem, which in turn, contributes to a business's bottom line. When your employees start creating content for your brand, the impact can be substantial, leading to faster customer acquisition. Studies indicate that 64% of companies with employee advocacy programs suggest that it helps them acquire new business.

Leverage Employee Networks

You can imagine a situation where your brand has 20,000 followers on social media. If you have 50 employees, all with an average of 10,000 social media followers, it means your employees will have a bigger reach than your brand. When you consider that these employees have already gained the trust of their audience, you realize that you will have more impactful campaigns through your employees.

Benefits to Workers

Employee advocacy programs also benefit workers. On top of the cash incentives they get, employees are also likely to be provided with a steady stream of content to post. They may be given guidance and coaching on how to improve their social media presence, which can help bolster their profiles.

Brands can empower employees to become reputable thought leaders and establish a strong personal brand. In some cases, the brand creates content on behalf of employees, and therefore, all employees simply publish on social media platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter. This position can provide them with an advantage in social selling and career advancement. 

Key Employee Advocacy Statistics to Know

If you are not sure whether employee advocacy is the right option for you, here are several statistics you need to know about:

1. Over the last decade, the interest in employee advocacy has increased by 191%.
2. 93% of social media users agree that they trust the recommendations of their family and friends more when choosing a brand.
3. A PostBeyond report indicates that brand messages often have a 561% higher reach when employees share them compared to the brand's channels.
4. According to a Social Media Today report, employee posts usually receive an 800% higher engagement than brand posts.
5. A Hinge Marketing report indicates that 79% of businesses with an employee advocacy program agree that it resulted in higher visibility. 
6. A Marketing Advisory Network report indicates that leads get a seven times higher conversion when the employee's social media develops them.
7. A LinkedIn report indicates that a brand with an effective employee advocacy strategy has a 58% higher chance of attracting talent. It's also 20% more likely to retain talent.
8. 44.9% of brands agree that their web traffic increased as a result of employee advocacy. 
9. A Hinge Marketing report indicates that 32% of brands experience an improvement in their search engine rankings as a result of employee advocacy programs. 
10. The Hinge Marketing report states that 29% of brands see their customers also become brand advocates as a result of employee advocacy.

Steps in Creating an Employee Advocacy Program

If you are getting started with an employee advocacy program, here are the steps you need to follow:

Engage Your Employees

Unless you have a positive and engaged workplace environment, it can be hard for your employees to act as your brand advocates. The only reasons why your employees will agree to act as your brand advocates are that they buy into the vision of your brand and recognize that they are a part of it. Additionally, it can also help if the brand is already marketing itself to employees. 

Therefore, before you encourage your employees to become brand advocates, determine if they are satisfied with their current department. Consider whether the employees are pleased with the support they are getting from the company. Other questions to ask yourself are:

• Do they feel like they are part of the company? 
• Are they happy with the direction the company has taken?
• How satisfied are the employees with the leadership of the company?
• Are the employees satisfied with the career progression opportunities in your company? 
• Are the employees getting feedback from their managers?

These questions will help you determine if your employees are happy at your organization. You can also identify areas that need improvement in employee engagement. With employees who are supportive and engaged with your business, you have a strong foundation for your employee advocacy program. 

Building a Positive Company Culture

A company’s culture resides in the genetic code of your company. It's a reflection of the brand’s personality and helps shape various aspects of an organization, such as decision-making, customers, employees, and brand sentiments. Unless your company culture aims for a dynamic social presence, employee engagement and innovation, it might not be effective. There are several steps you can take to build a positive work culture. These include:

• Determine your organization's mission and values. The company's mission and values reflect what is essential for the company and its personnel. This could be something like sustainability or innovation. Consider which among your values your employees rally behind. Consider also the values that will reflect entrustment and positivity among your employees.
• Foster relationships and collaboration. Ensure there are opportunities for employees to get to know one another at the workplace. You can do that through workplace events and team lunches. Stronger company relationships foster collaboration, leading to increased customer retention and enhanced workplace satisfaction.
• Be flexible. If employees wish to take on responsibilities outside of work, they should do so without fear of repercussions. This can be key in improving the work-life balance and enhancing the morale among employees.
• Promote inclusivity and diversity. When you build equity, inclusion, and diversity, you can easily create a positive work culture. Ensure your recruitment process reflects diversity and inclusivity. Educate your employees about the potential for unconscious biases and take the necessary steps to prevent them from occurring. Also, implement a strategic training program to foster an inclusive work environment.
• Create opportunities for growth. Ensure your employees have the necessary tools and resources to continue their learning and development. You can leverage the performance management program to help align your vision with the employees' expectations. Works and luncheons can also be essential channels for growth opportunities.
• Lead compassionately. When you show empathy at the workplace, you can make your employees feel seen, heard, and appreciated. Therefore, when your employees are going through tough times, listen and support them. 
• Reward outstanding work. When your employees perform in an exemplary way, appreciating them can help them feel appreciated and valued. This can also help foster a work culture where friendly competition leads to better performance. You can recognize your employees in various ways, such as yearly awards, bonuses, team shoutouts, paid time off, and monthly employee of the month awards.
• Be clear and transparent. When employees are engaged, they fully immerse themselves in your business. You should support them by providing them with transparent and clear communication. Ensure they thoroughly understand the company's performance and the key decisions it is making. This helps the team feel valued. You can provide your employees with monthly or weekly updates using company meetings and a newsletter.
• Have clear goals. Ensure your employees fully understand what is expected of them by clearly communicating the department and company goals. When you set goals for employees, you provide them with a sense of purpose. Goals are also key in tracking and monitoring performance.
• Embrace employee feedback. It is also essential to get regular feedback to address and resolve any issues that may arise within the company. This can also be a great way to make your employees feel seen and heard. 

Employee Advocacy Goals

Ensure you understand what you are trying to achieve with an employee advocacy program. If necessary, you can even have multiple goals, with each goal having its success ingredients. Some of the top goals can include:

• Amplifying the reach of your brand on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, or TikTok. 
• Attracting top talent.
• Social selling.
• Positioning yourself as an employee as though a leader.

Your choice of goal is what will determine the strategy you use. 

Set the Right KPIs

Another key step in an employee advocacy program is setting the right KPIs to measure the program's impact. Some of the major KPIs you should track are:

• Employee adoption. You can use these metrics to track the number of active users compared to the employees you invited to the program.
• Potential reach. This metric will show you the number of people who are potentially reached by the content shared through your employee advocacy.
• Share rate. Shows the number of shares done by employees in comparison to the total active users.
• Interactions. Measures whether the employee's connections, friends, or followers are interacting with the content.
• Click-through rate. Shows the number of people who clicked the employee posts. This metric can be a crucial indicator of the advocacy program's engagement rate. 
• Earned Media Value (EMV). This metric illustrates the amount of dollars you save from the employee advocacy program compared to using paid media. This metric will show you the monetary value that the employee advocacy program is bringing. 
• Website traffic. Consider the traffic you are getting from the channels where employees are posting their content.
• Conversion rate. You can go a step further to uncover the value you are getting from your website traffic by tracking the conversion rate. The action can be anything from buying or downloading an ebook to signing up for a program, and more. 

Ensure the goal can be accurately measured using key social media analytics.

Create Clear Employee Advocacy Guidelines

The next step should be to create your social media policy. If you already have one, you can proceed with updating it. This will act as the code of conduct or guidebook for your employees when they post content on social media. 

The social media policy will outline the types of content employees can create and what they should avoid. This will also help alleviate the fear among your employees that their content could land them in trouble. However, you should avoid making the social media policy too restrictive, to the point that it loses interest. Instead, create a policy that empowers employees to be creative on social media. 

Get the Support of Key Players

Unless the employee advocacy program has the support of key industry players, it can be hard for it to be successful. Therefore, you will need key players such as:

Managers and Executives

Remember that the managers and executives will be giving the approval for resources. Additionally, these individuals set the tone for the company. Studies indicate that the most effective employee advocacy programs are those championed by the company’s president and CEOs. 

Additionally, when employee advancement is championed by the company’s executives, this helps increase its adoption rate. The more people taking part in it, the more powerful it becomes. 

Cross-Department Support

You also need to ensure that you have the support of other departmental managers and heads. This is important, as departmental leaders will also help set the tone in their respective departments. However, it is essential to remember that different departments have distinct key performance indicators (KPIs), thus employee advocacy programs should be aligned with these specific KPIs. 

For instance, you can demonstrate to the sales team how employee advocacy can help increase their sales. When they see the value to their department, they will fully support the employee advocacy program. Therefore, before you can reach out to different departments, ensure you fully understand their goals. 

Employee

There cannot be employee advocacy without their support. These are the most important people to onboard. When convincing them to join the program, show them the value they will get from the program, such as: 

• Growing their networks.
• Improving thought leadership.
• Supporting their career growth.

Spend time gauging different departments to understand which ones will get the highest value from the employee advocacy. You can now recruit your employee advocacy team, starting with the departments that will get the most gains.

Implementing the Employee Advocacy Program

Now that everything is set, it's time to move on to the most critical part: rolling out the employee advocacy program. When doing that, consider a channel where you can bring the team involved in the employee advocacy program, such as Slack, email, Team Sync-ups, and town halls. You should then set up a hub or channel where employees can pick up the content to share and provide their feedback.

Take the time to train employees on the advocacy program to help them understand the goals and drive visibility to their social media pages. They can also set up the workshops for the training program. Consider designating an employee to oversee the employee advocacy program.

Employee Advocacy Content Creation Strategy

One of the factors that will impact the level of success of your social media advocacy program is the quality of content you will be posting. You may also have various types of content you want to use, such as blogs, ebooks, and behind-the-scenes content. However, avoid focusing on branded content only and instead have a combination of good quality content, such as:

• Spotlight on employees in the branded content. Use internal insights and quotes.
• Leverage customers. Ask for their contribution in providing insights, expertise, and advocacy.
• Leverage third-party content. If there is a source that your employees love to read, you can utilize it for your employee advocacy program. 
• Employee-generated content. 

Remember that an employee advocacy program doesn't mean you have a posting bot. You need to engage your employees by making them active participants in the program. This is important as employees can only advocate for content they share. Overall, ensure that your employee advocacy content consists of a mix of branded and unbranded content, as well as employee-generated and third-party content.

Provide Incentives for Employees

Ensure you provide incentives for your current employees to support the program's continued growth. You can even take the reward mechanism a notch higher and use things like rankings and leaderboards to increase competition. For instance, you can use rewards such as gift cards for your reward program.

Consider ways to attract new advocates and re-engage those who were previously inactive. If some employees achieve a particular milestone, such as creating a specified number of views, consider creating an award to recognize their achievement.

Collect Employee Feedback

Your employees play a crucial role in the employee advocacy program, and it is essential to understand their perspective on the program. Remember that a drop in the employee advocacy program can negatively impact your brand's advocacy efforts. Therefore, take the employees' involvement seriously.

Ensure that employee advocacy also focuses on the employee's growth. These should remain the center of many areas, such as content creation, and the strategies you are building for content sharing.

Final Thoughts

Employee advocacy remains one of the most effective but underutilized strategy for building brand awareness and conversion. When well done, it can create a buzz around your brand. Since the friends and family of your employees trust them, they will begin to view your brand in a positive light. If you are wondering how to use employee advocacy to take your brand to the next level, our detailed guide will help you.

The primary reason individuals and businesses create content is to provide exposure to their brand, products, or services. Whether you are creating educational or entertaining content, your content cannot make an impact if nobody sees it. With the desire to have their content seen, many creators strive to create viral content. After all, it's everyone’s dream to make videos, pictures or written content that everyone is talking about.

In most cases, viral content is usually short-term and isn't suitable for a long-term social media strategy. People like, comment on, and share it before moving on to the next piece of viral content. On the other hand, there is evergreen content that may not receive the same level of visibility as viral content. But it never grows old and will always attract an audience to your content. In this article, we will look at whether you should focus on viral or evergreen content for your long-term content strategy. 

What is Viral Content?

Viral content often capitalizes on a trend or pop culture. The virality may have been propelled by a story that gained widespread attention in the news media. Alternatively, a movie could be released on a streaming service, sparking widespread discussion. All these provide you with an opportunity to create viral content. You can read our guide on creating viral TikTok videos.

Viral content is often the result of a short-term content strategy that has to be repeated if you want to gain long-term success. The good thing about viral content is that it can enable you to rack up millions of views in a few hours, increasing the visibility of your brand. Viral content also contributes to SEO success.  

However, the downside of this type of content is that it can be particularly challenging to achieve virality. Even the videos that often go viral may do so by a fluke. Therefore, no matter how hard you try to make your content go viral, there is no timeline for when it can happen. At times, it can take days, while at others, it takes years or never happens at all.

Pros of Viral Content

Viral content has several benefits, such as:

• Great visibility for your brand.
• Fast ranking when published early.
• Higher engagement rate.

Drawbacks of Viral Content

• A drop in the result after a trend has ended.
• Need to be posted early to benefit from the trend.
• You can have obsolete pages.
• Not easy to rework the pages.
• It's never easy to go viral.

What is Evergreen Content?

Evergreen content refers to content that remains relevant and valuable over time, requiring only occasional updates to maintain its relevance. It consists of topics that people search for throughout the year, which means the content remains relevant throughout the year, providing a greater long-term SEO strategy.  

Compared to viral content, evergreen content often has a long lifespan. It's able to maintain relevance and continue to receive targeted links and traffic that have SEO benefits in the long run. Even when it appears to be losing its appeal, you can republish, rework, or reformat evergreen content so that it continues to offer great value. 

Evergreen content offers creators a certain level of control they don't have with viral content. With evergreen content, you can control the messaging. On the other hand, viral content can get out of control, hurting your brand. While evergreen content isn't as flashy as viral content, it can be beneficial in the long run.

Pros of Evergreen Content

Evergreen content has various benefits, such as:

• Consists of topics and keywords with consistent search volumes
• A steady traffic flow for the content
• Easy to refresh the content 
• Continues to attract long-term traffic
• No need to rush your content creation process
• Has a better ROI

Downsides of Evergreen Content

Evergreen content also has its downsides, such as:

• Takes a bit of time before it gains traction.
• Low visibility compared to viral content.

Viral vs. Evergreen Content: Which is Better?

With both types of content having their pros and cons, you may be left wondering which of these you should choose. The choice will depend on your specific business needs. If your business depends on ad revenue, it can benefit from creating viral content. However,  evergreen content is a good choice for most companies.

If you are creating evergreen content, it might not get a lot of traffic at the beginning, but it will increase your ranking on search engines, which can result in higher conversions. However, a good idea would be to leverage both viral and evergreen content in social media campaigns and SEO. Ensure your content has both components of evergreen and viral content. 

Create content that is positive, heartwarming, educational, and entertaining, like viral content. On the other hand, it should have the attributes of evergreen content, such as long-lasting and controlled messaging. In the best-case scenario, you might see your evergreen content going viral.

When combining both content formats, a good idea would be to have a higher number for evergreen content. For instance, you can create ten evergreen pieces of content and one viral piece of content. You can then test the content and keep adjusting as necessary. Remember that in some industries, it's easier to discover viral content than in others. This is because we have breaking news in some sectors more than in others. If you are in such an industry, you may focus more on creating viral content than evergreen content. Other factors to consider include:

• The platform on which you will be posting the content
• The content type you are publishing

It would be helpful to ensure you understand your brand’s audience to determine if evergreen content will serve you better.

Tips to Create Evergreen Content That Goes Viral

For your evergreen content to go viral, it should resonate with your audience. Here are tips on creating such content:

Solve a Burning Problem

In a world where people are searching for solutions to their problems, providing value with your content can help capture their attention. 

Conduct market research to identify the problems, questions, and pain points that the target audience is facing. You can do that using keyword research tools and social media listening tools to discover the issues. Consider if there are common trends and themes that your audience is creating.

• Creating content. After identifying your audience's pain points, you can now document how to create content that addresses these issues. Depending on the platform you are using, you can create various types of content, including video tutorials, blog posts, infographics, and podcast episodes. Utilize a content format, such as storytelling, to increase the engagement level and relatability of the content.
• Content promotion and distribution. After creating the content, document how you will promote it across various channels and platforms, and share the content on social media and through your email list. Consider also collaborating with an influencer in your field who may be interested in sharing the content.

Share Common Hacks

Another effective strategy is to create content that offers people innovative solutions or hacks that simplify their lives. While in the past, the strategy focused on addressing a challenge your audience is facing, it now involves providing a solution to a significant problem that a large audience is facing. Ensure you give a straightforward solution to the problem with improved results.

You can now create content that showcases the solutions and hacks you offer. Make your content more interesting by using a step-by-step guide, visuals, and before-and-after images. These will help to make the content easy to follow and more engaging. Ensure you also highlight the benefits and convenience offered by the hacks. You can now encourage your audience to share the hacks. Putting the content in the form of infographics and shareable graphics can help you showcase the tips.

Bust Myths and Misconceptions

There are no niches without myths and misconceptions that you can debunk and generate a buzz with your content. This type of content is usually interesting for most people because they are drawn to content that challenges their beliefs. Therefore, begin by researching a common myth or misconception, such as a widely held belief, a common practice, or a piece of wisdom you don't find accurate.

Ensure you select an interest that is relevant to your target audience. To make it convincing, use relevant expert opinions, evidence, and data to support the claims. Ensure you remain constructive and respectful in the approach, as your goal isn't to alienate your audience but to leave them informed and educated.

Like our other content strategies, you will need a social media marketing plan to promote and distribute the content. Also, encourage your audience to share the myth with their family and friends who might find the revelation surprising. Spark debates and discussions around the topic to increase its chances of going viral.

Mash up Several Topics

Another great way to pique your users' attention is by combining two unrelated topics. This can help spark your audience’s attention and intrigue. Start by searching for two unrelated issues, but you can use your creativity to combine them. You can merge different hobbies, art forms, or industries. The goal should be to find a unique perspective or angle connecting the topics.

Now, you can start creating content for your chosen topic. Whether it's a podcast episode, blog post, or video, ensure you don't force the ideas to fuse, but allow them to flow naturally. Your goal should be to create content that surprises and entertains your audience. When promoting the content, you can highlight the unexpected combination of topics. Highlight your creativity and novelty to capture your audience’s interest and get new followers.

For instance, if you run a YouTube channel that focuses on cooking and science, you can create a topic on  “The Science Behind Cooking: Combining Culinary Arts and Chemistry.” You can then go ahead and explore the various chemical reactions that occur during cooking and how these affect food textures and flavors. This piece of content helps you attract audiences who are attracted to cooking and science.

Focusing on a Niche or Subculture

Niche cultures and subcommunities can offer a good opportunity to make your evergreen content go viral. This is because the communities consist of passionate and dedicated members who are hungry for content that meets their needs. Therefore, begin by identifying the niche communities, subcultures, and forums in your niche. These may be social media groups, online forums, or physical gatherings. Review the questions, discussions, and interests of the members to generate ideas for content creation. 

Once you start creating content, ensure it aligns with the preferences and interests of the subcommunities. Ensure the content addresses the pain points in their language, while positioning you as an expert in the niche. This will also make your content highly shareable.

You can share the content with the subculture and niche community you are targeting. Ensure you engage with members by participating in their discussions and offering them valuable insights. When people see that the content is resonating with them, they are more likely to share it with others, increasing the chances of the content going viral. 

Final Thoughts

If you want to go with viral or evergreen content for your long-term social media content strategy, consider both. With a combination of strategy, creativity, and understanding your audience, it's even possible to create evergreen content that can go viral.

To do that, you need to address your audience's pain points, provide some innovative hacks, and debunk different myths. You should also mash up different topics and tap into niche communities and subcultures.