Your Post Can Be a (Good) Virus!

Ever thought of being an influencer on the social scene?

From the medical standpoint, a virus is the poster child for a healthy dosage of bad news, and no one wants to hear about them ordinarily. But this isn’t so for the 21st century individual on all sorts of social media platforms- and especially for the freelancer or anyone else who is a content creator.

While some posts are all over the place the minute they are posted, some seem to crawl at snail-like speed, not getting beyond only a few views. Have you ever been on the latter part of the spectrum? Yep, so not nice!

How do you make that informative post go viral? Yeah, you are convinced that you have a message to pass across, but how do you convince others of the same?

It was Thomas Edison, world acclaimed genius who said that “genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”.

This quote can be assessed from two angles: the first and most popular interpretation being that you would have to work tirelessly, if you would achieve significant progress in life; and the second less popular one is that even with 99% of perspiration, without inspiration, your work might not end up being as impactful as it ought to be. That’s the path I’m choosing to tread today- the path of inspiration.

While talking about viral social media posts, let us take a sneak peek into the real organisms themselves- this is a crash course in virology!

Come on…don’t groan, I promise it’ll be fun.

To make your post go viral, a few things must be done

1.Attachment:

Before a virus begins to have its effect on a cell and eventually, on the body, it has to first and foremost, attach itself to that cell.

In other words, if your post would go viral, you have to ensure that it resonates with the minds of your readers. It must find a place in their hearts so strong, that they can chew on it for a reasonable amount of time.

2.Packaging:

Viruses have envelopes, which make them penetrate host cells, and then replicate in them. How packaged are your posts? They have to be packaged in such a way that they are emotionally provoking, unique enough to pass across a message in your own specific voice.

3.Penetration:

There is a difference between attraction and longevity. You can be attracted to something that’s flashy, but it might not leave any mark on you in the long run. Viruses which would be effective must be able to find a way to penetrate into the host cell. Attachment is not enough, how much impact are you having? What is the weight of your words on social media? When crafting a post, have enough relevant things to say, and if necessary, research on the given topic or subject matter.

4. Uncoating:

Post-penetration, your post has to be readily understood, and the details contained therein must be very clear to the reader. Every virus, to be effective, must ensure that it makes its genetic material available to the cell (don’t go MIA on me now!), in other words, your true intent must be known to your reader. Your message must be both clear and applicable.

5.Replication:

Let us consider replication as ‘share-ability’. How ‘share-able’ are your posts? Would it produce the same emotion in the reader or listener as it does in you? In effect, what are you looking for? The post that would go viral must produce some strong emotions in the writer or creator, for it to produce any such emotions in the one who is the recipient of such a post.

Sharing expert knowledge on a given topic is likely to turn a lot of heads in the direction of your post, since your perspective would be viewed as being the ‘right’ perspective in the given field. Your view must however, be original and down-to-earth, not flimsy and without any form of backing- these sort of posts don’t get much attention, or even if they do, not from the targeted audience.

6.Release:

This is usually the terminal stage of a virus’s action, which often ends up killing the cell, but yours should be targeted at producing excellent results in terms of the provoking of emotions in your reader

Having an active social media community can also help in making sure your posts get shared across all social media platforms and that your message gets to all the appropriate individuals.

As well, we all know the craze about hashtags and their place on social media; and that hashtags are a brilliant way to tie conversations together. Therefore, using the relevant hashtags can also be a good step in ensuring that your post gets the much needed publicity which it ought to get.