Why Content Goes Viral
Every day, countless new articles, videos and blogs are uploaded to the Internet. Most of these languish in relative obscurity. But a few go viral: they explode across the web, attracting the attention of hundreds of thousands (sometimes millions) of people in short order. Content that goes viral may remain in the public consciousness for days, weeks, or longer. So for those who want to reach a large audience—whether it’s for a corporate marketing campaign or to promote a personal cause or to show the world your cat’s amazing yodeling ability—the question of what makes content go viral online important.
In our research, two of us (Milkman and Berger) have explored what it is that makes some content spread like wildfire and whether it’s possible to deliberately achieve viral status. If so, what are the characteristics of viral content?
Our work builds on previous research exploring questions about which urban legends catch on and why? And what drives the spread of gossip?
We examined what content on the New York Times’ homepage is most widely shared, and what scientific research summaries are most likely to be passed along and found that viral content tends to be characterized by certain, predictable qualities. While content may be shared for many reasons, overall, content that elicits an emotional reaction tends to be more widely shared. In addition, stories stimulating positive emotions are more widely shared than those eliciting negative feelings, and content that produces greater emotional arousal (making your heart race) is more likely to go viral. This means that content that makes readers or viewers feel a positive emotion like awe or wonder is more likely to take off online than content that makes people feel sad or angry, though causing some emotion is far better than inspiring none at all. Also, anger-inducing content is more likely to be shared than sadness-inducing content because it produces greater emotional arousal or activation.
What our findings mean for practical purposes is that if you’re trying to create content that will make a big splash, making the message positive is likely to help, and emotionality is key. Of course, more interesting, practically useful and surprising content is also more likely to go viral.
The take-away message from this work is that if you want your video, press release, news story, blog post or tweet to reach as many people as possible, there are specific things you can do to increase its chances of being widely shared. Make it emotional—ideally triggering emotions like anger, anxiety or awe that tend to make our hearts race; and if you can, make it positive. This may be more even effective than other methods that are currently in wide use like targeting “influentials,” or opinion leaders. Crafting contagious content, as this research suggests, may provide more bang for your buck and create more reliably viral content.
Published in Scientific American
By Liz Rees-Jones, Katherine L. Milkman and Jonah Berger
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