Jonah Peretti is the cyber enfant terrible behind various viral web stunts (remember those Nike sweatshop emails or the Rejection Line?), co-founder of the Huffington Post and CEO of booming web hub BuzzFeed. Check out Contagious Media Experiments for some case studies of his earlier work. This guy’s so good that his recent presentation at Buzzfeed’s NYC offices on how to make stuff go viral, has actually gone viral itself. Here’s a quick run-down of his 5 tips for making stuff that gets shared on the web:
1. Make things that the Bored At Work Network (where are you reading this now?) will be interested in. there’s a network of people using their company’s high-speed internet out there and using it to search for lunchtime LOLs and they are bigger than CNN, the BBC and any other news service you can think of. If they like it, they’ll pass it around for you for free.
2. The Mullet Strategy – put your business up front and make sure there’s a party out back. Peretti cites the Huffington Post which has serious news articles on the front page but also enables socialising, commenting, sharing and all manner of social network interaction.
3. Big Seed – Peretti says you should spend your budget creating quality creative content. When you are relying on virality, media buying costs are slight, so spend big to make your content as good as it can be and people will be more likely to look after your distribution.
4. As well as the Bored At Work, it also helps to appeal to the nutters of the web – the Perez Hiltons & Lady Gagas who will spread your content to their countless followers if it tickles their fancy.
5. Be a Mormon, not a Jew. Peretti explains that both are quality religions, but Jews suck at marketing, whereas Mormons constantly evangelise, tracking their conversion rates over time and it works. Jews experience flat growth but Mormonism enjoys a growth curve akin to facebook’s. So once you’re onto a quality idea, make sure you evangelise and constantly review your success.
Peretti also warns that even if you follow these five tips, success is far from assured, and the best strategy to achieve lolcat status is to create plenty of material – online success is almost always a surprise to all involved, so don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Happy evangelising!
