Brian Chappell

Discrete Viral Factors That Cause People To Share Crappy Content

By Brian Chappell on May 4, 2009

Creating captivating blog posts that get seen by thousands of people really isn’t as complicated as its made out to be. Granted, the execution of successful content distribution is an art in and of itself, however, the factors that cause content to spread many times can be boiled down to a few things. Many times, the real nuts and bolts of the blogpost can be total garbage, and with the help of a few tactile modifications the content can go viral.

Consistent Image Sizing

Consistent image sizing is critical, many times posts that have 25+ images laid out and sized consistently can go viral, just because the fact there are so many consistently sized images, no matter what the content of the images are.

 

Tutorial Posts With Clear Imagery and Explanation

Tutorial posts are another great way to convey information on a blog. Rather then explain how to do something with just text, breaking up the flow of the document with concrete call to actions and examples via imagery can help a lot. Many times I find tutorials that are completely inaccurate or represent false or dated information, but because the post is laid out so well, it gets shared around.

 

The OMG Photo

The OMG photo as I have coined is that awesome hero shot you find on some blogposts. I see this time and time again, where a unbelievably funny or creative hero shot causes a blogpost to go viral, no matter what the actual article said.

Lengthy Infographic Content

One of my favorite ways to convey information is through an infographic. Although time consuming to create, they tend to go viral.

 

Consistent Giant List Round Ups

This really is where quality gets washed away sometimes. Want to create a hit on your blog? Simply round up 146 sources that discuss a niche topic, write up brief descriptions about each and lay it out in a consistent, readable manner. I see several specific sites that make a killing doing this all the time, and guess what, typically the sites listed are not that great and sometimes are lucky to be on topic.

 

If you notice one of the biggest factors people will overlook in executing content distribution is consistency. Messy, outdated, false, regurgitated content gets shared all the time. Consistent, easy to read layouts is king, content is queen.

The snapshots I sourced in this article are examples of consistency + great content which will yield the greatest chance for success.