If there is one thing that all content marketers are losing sleep over, it is how to make their content viral. How to get more shares organically, how to craft that contagious content that makes their brand a force to reckon with overnight. And, if you are a startup, it’s tougher due to limited resources (time, money, and professional talent). This rat race for more likes, shares, subscribers & customers has led to content overload problem. With Facebook’s organic reach abysmally low, it has now become a tougher nut to crack. After going through loads of ‘How to create viral content guides’, ‘understanding why people share content’, taking inspiration through AIB, Terribly Tiny Tales & Practo, trying, retrying & failing; we, at Ketchupp, finally managed to get 90K shares in 90 days. We would like to share with you the story of how we did it.
How we achieved 90,000 shares in 90 days
It was Valentine’s Day and being a dish discovery platform, it was a tough task to include food with the theme on love. After a lot of deliberation, we decided to choose humour to invoke the feeling of ‘awwwww’ among the young brigade. Our creative & content marketing guys burnt some midnight oil & came up with 7 punchlines that gave love a twist. Valentine’s Day is the day when everyone craves to hear those 3 magical words & the day has got a universal appeal. We decided to choose minimal graphics with illustrations with a powerful copy & came up with an album titled “Happy Valentine Week”.
- Rather than posting the album on Valentine’s Day, we posted the album 1 week before, riding on the anticipation of the D-Day. There are seven days before Valentine’s Day & each day ( Rose Day, Propose Day, Chocolate Day, Teddy Day, Promise Day, Hug Day, and Kiss Day) built the momentum for Valentine’s Day.
- The copy (text chosen) wasn’t too much. The user isn’t here to read your blog. You probably have less than 2 seconds to hold on to the user attention as he/she browses through his/her timeline. Unless you are an Honest Page. We only had 2,500 page likes at that time, so we didn’t expect an instantaneous barrage of likes/shares from our fans. Facebook average reach is 5%, so only 25 people were expected to see it on their timeline organically. Hence, we did an initial boost of INR 1000 to make it reach to a wider audience.
- We chose illustrations rather than actual graphic pictures below the copy for a “cute” look & feel in line with our “awww” brief. The overall album was in sync with our brand imagery – quirky, cool, entertaining yet relevant.
- The theme chosen was “How to express love through food” which had a mass appeal –lovers/couples/foodies/bloggers/girlfriends/boyfriends/your crush/those who love food. We made sure we cater to our target audience – foodies.
- We knew it has touched a chord when people started tagging their friends/wives/better halves on individual posts. With adrenaline rushing, we did many high fives in jubilation & reached 10K shares till 14th Feb. But, it wasn’t done yet. One specific day around 24th Feb, the notifications started ticking in & comments like “So like you <person name>” rushed in. We knew it was bigger than we thought. That’s perhaps the power of an evergreen content, as they say. We just enjoyed the ride later on & watched in amazement with the number of shares increasing in thousands as the weeks passed by. That 10K gave us the confidence of a product market fit for that album.
Our Learnings
- Number of likes on the page is just a vanity number
- Choose a theme that’s trending/that has a wide mass appeal (or a combination of both)
- Keep your copy simple yet powerful
- Don’t ignore the cover picture – it is the most ignored asset by marketers. It is as important as the entire copy.
- Create a content that invokes curiosity, surprise and awe. Any content that can make people feel smart when shared by them will be shared automatically
- People are still drawn towards an album (rather than just GIFs) provided it’s awesomely brilliant
- Be persistent – keep trying & learn what clicks
- Same album on Twitter/Instagram didn’t yield results for us – certain kind of content is made specifically for that medium. Also depends on where your users are
- Evenings received 23% more shares as compared to mornings/afternoons
You can watch the entire “Happy Valentine Week Album” here.