Follow the exact process process I used to create a piece of viral content that brought in over 100,000 visits and links from the press in just 48 hours.
In my last post, I looked at how a small website had used an infographic, an emotive topic, some simple sharing (in the right places) and the power of viral marketing, to bring in hundreds of fresh, authoritative, and powerful, links in a matter of days.
I also promised that in my next post (this one!) I would show how you can leverage someone else’s successful viral content to bring thousands of new visitors to your own site.
So… let’s do it!
The Highlights & An Important Point!
SEO theory is great, but there can be an element of ‘yeah, that’s cool an’ all, but it wouldn’t really work for me now, would it’.
In fact, there is a post right here on Ahrefs by Dale Cudmore, in which he pretty much expresses that very opinion (specifically on Brian Dean’s skysraper method).
I get it.
But I disagree.
A good strategy is a good strategy, and if it works for one site it can also work for you.
To go some way towards proving that, I’m going to walk through how I tapped into the slipstream of another site’s viral content (specifically the one from the original case study), to create my own content which: –
- Brought in over 100,000 new visitors to my site within 48 hours of going live
- Has been shared over 7,000 times on facebook (+ over 17,000 likes)
- Brought in links from DA 87, DA 86, and DA 83, National Newspapers (UK).
- Has been shared on hundreds of other sites around the web
To confirm, I rolled this out after publishing my previous post (so I was leaving myself open to having egg on my face if it didn’t work), and I did not leverage any existing connections or anything like that.
There was also $0 budget involved (save for 3-4 hours of my own time).
Which means, this is totally something you can do too!
So point made, let’s proceed…
A Quick Recap
Last time, we used Ahrefs to reverse engineer the strategy a blog called ‘The Renegade Pharmacist’ had used to bring in hundreds of high quality links to their infographic about the health effects of Coca-Cola.
You can read the original post for the full lowdown, but in a nutshell, we discovered that there were 5 main ingredients in the process: –
- A decent quality infographic
- A share in the right place
- An emotive topic
- Some controversy
- Incurring the wrath of a big brand!
At the time of publication (4th August), the site had increased their referring domains from 0 to 193 in just a few days, with many of those links coming from super authority sites (e.g. yahoo, telegraph, and buzzfeed).
Since then, the links have continued to come flooding in, and using Ahrefs Site Explorer, we can see that they now have 774 referring domains pointing at their site.
Remember, just 3 weeks ago, they had 0 referring domains!
But enough about them, let’s get on with how to leverage some of that buzz for ourselves 
The Flavour Of The Month
If you keep an eye on the media, you’ll notice that when something is ‘hot’ they tend to run with it for a while.
For example, if a story about scary spiders goes big (which it normally does at this time of the year), you will often see lots more articles popping up on that topic for at least a couple of weeks.
Basically, journalists are hungry for more of the same.
And talking of spiders, here is a screen shot from today’s google news.
There are spiders everywhere! And apparently they are getting bigger.
Want to see something cool…?
Well, here is a google news search for August 2014 on the same topic…
Look familiar?
Yep, basically, the media love to write about spiders around August time. It’s one of the flavours of the month.
So what’s my point?
Well, firstly, if you can create a cool piece of content based around spiders at this time of year, there’s a pretty decent chance it will be picked up.
But moving on from spiders (and as an arachnophobe I’m glad of that), the wider and more important point is that, generally, journalists like to write about what is trending. There is less ‘risk’ for them that way.
Which is the crux of this strategy. So, let’s get back to it!
Tapping Into The Trend
As the coke infographic had gone viral that week, and received huge coverage, I knew that there was a strong chance both consumers, and the media, would be thirsty for more (pun intended).
With this in mind, I decided to create a satirical twist on the coke graphic for one of my own sites, (Favrify.com) which would focus on Scotland’s ‘other national drink’ – Irn Bru.
So armed with photoshop and a large latté, I got to work, and within a couple of hours, our Irn-Bru infographic was ready to publish.
You can see the original post here.
If we refer back to the ingredients for the coke infographic’s success, we can see that our new infographic ticked the boxes (we’ll exclude the share for now): –
- A decent quality infographic: My photoshop skills are ok, but there is nothing hugely complicated here
- An emotive topic: Scottish independence is about as emotive as it gets
- Some controversy: While the infographic is clearly tongue in cheek, I guess it could cause a little bit of offence south of the border…
- Incurring the wrath of a big brand: Well no, but what it does do is feature a much loved Scottish brand
Additionally our infographic had the advantage of leveraging a currently trending topic (the coke viral).
So, with the post live, and ticking 4 out of the 5 boxes, it was on to the missing ingredient.
A Share In The Right Place
Now, I will admit that we had a slight advantage here in that the facebook page for Favrify has reasonable (but not huge) reach, and the site is in the ‘viral news’ space.
But while the post started to get some initial traction from our own facebook share, it was not this that started the viral spread.
In my breakdown of the success of the coke infographic, I stressed the importance of getting your content in front of the right eyeballs.
The key is to share where your content will resonate with the audience, increasing the probability that your initial share will lead to further sharing (and more eyeballs).
Here are some places you might consider sharing your content: –
- Other facebook pages with bigger reach (either on timeline if allowed, or through a message)
- Facebook Groups
- Reddit (but don’t go crazy on self promotion)
- Google+ groups
- Niche specific forums (if so, best to be transparent)
- Stumbleupon (but probably more of a slow burner)
Remember though… be cool, and don’t spam!
In this instance, I started by sharing our post in a couple of Scottish Independence Facebook groups.
And then the cool stuff started to happen…
Going Viral
Within a few hours of my initial shares, the post started to pick up some serious traction.
It was soon shared on reddit, and by the end of the day had made its way to the top of the r/Scotland subreddit.
The next morning things started to pick up pace, and by the afternoon, Facebook was driving thousands of visitors an hour to the post.
Real time analytics looked like this for most of the day…
With traffic peaking between 9 and 10pm, when there were 4,609 sessions.
Things slowed down overnight, but soon picked up again the following afternoon.
A little over 48 hours after going live, the post had been viewed over 100,000 times.
With the majority of traffic coming from Facebook. Note however, the organic traffic as people began specifically searching for the infographic.
And with that many eyeballs and social shares, it wasn’t long before the infographic started to attract the attention of the media.
Getting Press
Press enquiries started coming in the day after publication, with a number of major Scottish and UK media outlets requesting permission to share the infographic.
By the end of the week, the infographic had been shared on major news sites including Metro (DA87) , The Daily Record (DA83), and The Scotsman (DA86).
All of which included high quality, branded links.
These links are white hat in the purest form. I had conducted no direct outreach, and all the requests to share had been inbound, based on editors discovering (and wishing to write about) the content through its viral spread.
These are the kind of links that Google loves.
The kind that can make a huge difference to your site’s trust and rankings.
And notwithstanding the link juice, (positive) press coverage is of course great for your brand.
Use Ahrefs To Supercharge The Strategy
As I mentioned earlier, when a topic is trending, journalists often look for more of the same.
If they’ve already written about that topic, even better.
You’re breaking down that barrier to entry, which is something Derek Halpern of Social Triggers explains very well in this video outlining his ‘Drafting Technique’ for gaining press coverage.
And if you’re riding along on the slipstream of someone else’s viral content, you can use Ahrefs Site Explorer to easily find journalists (and bloggers) that have done just that!
To show you just how easy Ahrefs makes the process, I made this quick video…
And just in case you can’t understand my Scottish accent… here are the steps!
Step 1: Paste the URL into Site Explorer and click ‘Search Links’
Step 2: Select the ‘Referring Domains’ report from ‘Inbound Links’
Step 3: Order the report by Domain Rating (DR), so the most powerful links appear at the top of the report
Step 4: Click on ‘Backlinks’ to show individual referring URLs for a domain
Step 5: Click through to the referring URLs and locate journalists contact information
Step 6: Send them an email with a link to your awesome content!
To maximise response you’ll want to email the journalist, or blogger, directly whenever possible. Try and avoid filling in generic contact forms, or sending to catch all email addresses.
Note: Sometimes it can be a little tricky to get a journalist’s direct email, but with a little snooping you will normally find it (or at least make an educated guess at it). It’s worth the extra effort, and I also have some tricks for this which I will share in a future post 😉
Like all good outreach… keep your initial email short and sweet.
Viral Content: You Can Do This Too.
This is a simple, but powerful strategy.
There are no hidden tricks.
It’s all about tapping into viral content, creating your own related content, and getting that content in front of the initial, relevant audience, to start the ball rolling.
Keep an eye on the news, the viral sites, and your Facebook feed, to see what is trending.
You will soon find a topic that’s a fit for your business – although you may have to think a little outside the box.
When you hit upon an idea, get in there fast, as: –
a) Tapping into a viral content slipstream is generally time sensitive (get in while it’s still news)
b) If you don’t do it, someone else will!
It won’t work every time, but when it does, you’ll get the traffic, links and media mentions that will take your website to the next level.
So, over to you!
If you have any questions about this strategy, or creating viral content, then just drop a comment below, and be sure to sign up for the Ahrefs newsletter for loads more actionable SEO and link building tips.
TL;DR
When something goes viral it generally becomes flavour of the month with the press. Use that to your advantage, by creating shareable, emotive content based around the same topic (but also relevant to your business), and share in high traffic places to get the ball rolling. Generally infographics work best for maximising shares from other sites. Act fast while the topic is hot. Enjoy the traffic and links. Don’t forget to use sunscreen.
