How to go viral with influencers

Viral marketing has quickly become one of the most sought-after strategies for commercial success – and what brand wouldn’t like to go viral on social media? The main difference with these types of campaigns is that social media users are the ones who share campaigns on their profiles, instead of influencers. But, to achieve this, it’s not as easy as it seems. In this article, we’re going to take a look at how to do so (or, at least give it a good shot!).

How to go viral on social media

It seems pretty easy to create a viral campaign; an eye-catching video, a good hashtag and you’re set, right? But it’s not quite as simple as that. Just like with every digital marketing strategy, it’s important to study and plan every last detail of your campaign. When is the perfect moment to launch your campaign? Why type of content should you use? What should be the focus of your viral campaign? In terms of the timing, it’s safe to say that the “perfect moment” doesn’t exist with viral marketing. It is, however, important to study the market and launch your campaign when your target audience isn’t already saturated by viral content from other brands.

Video content is the reigning champion of viral marketing campaigns. It’s eye-catching, can be extremely creative and it’s easy to go viral, thanks to the simplicity of video platforms. There are two main focuses used for viral video campaigns, which can be referred to as a perceived focus and a concealed focus. With a perceived focus, the audience knows that what they’re watching is commercial content, whereas with a concealed focus, the brand’s participation in the campaign is only revealed towards the end of the video.

Social networks are the perfect place to launch viral marketing strategies for the following reasons:

• They’re a low cost option. The main characteristic of viral campaigns is that social media users are the ones who do all of the legwork, diffusing the content for the brand. However, brands can always make a small investment when initially creating their campaigns and collaborate with influencers so that they share the content with their followers. We’ll see how to do so later on in this article.
• When launching a viral campaign, it’s the perfect moment to improve branding and increase awareness on social networks. For that reason, creating a hashtag is fundamental for associating your viral campaign to your brand.
• Great potential to reach a wide audience. Brand’s can potentially impact millions of social media users with their commercial content, even if they’re not actually interested in the brand or follow its social media profiles.

Viral marketing with influencers

We can all agree that, to create a successful viral marketing campaign, it’s important to have eye-catching, creative content with a good hook to pull people in. But for your viral content to be recognised, we recommend making a small investment at the beginning to give it your campaign initial boost.

Creating a viral marketing strategy with influencers is the perfect recipe for ensuring your content will be widely diffused, thanks to their ability to reach thousands or even millions of social media users. However, as with all influencer marketing campaigns, it’s important to choose the right profiles. Influencers should have the same values as the brand and the message it wishes to transmit with its viral content.

Examples of viral marketing with influencers

To end the year on a high, Ruavieja launched a viral marketing campaign which was a roaring success. From the very first moment it launched, their campaign video was dubbed the video of the year.

Ruavieja #TenemosQueVernosMás (#WeNeedToSeeEachOtherMore)

It was launched at the right time and in the right place. The days leading up to Christmas are renowned for being the perfect time to launch a creative and emotive video, and the brand chose Twitter as their platform for this specific campaign, a social network which allows users to share content in a quick and easy way.

The campaign claim and hashtag perfectly summed up the essence of the campaign and its message: we need to see each other more. It refers to the excessive amount of time we all spend working or perhaps just sat in front of a screen, and the little time we dedicate to what is really important; our nearest and dearest.

Results obtained with Influencity’s software. Post by @ruavieja.

In just one month, the video got more than 12 million views on YouTube, a 101.02% engagement rate on Twitter and 2 million dollars of Earned media. Furthermore, as we can see with the campaign results, the video impacted just as many men as it did women, with 92% of the impacted users residing in Spain, specifically from Madrid and Barcelona.

How did influencers help boost this campaign on twitter? Let’s take a look at the publications by three influential profiles on Twitter and their results:

Results obtained by Inluencity’s software of the combination of three posts by @albertommoral, @carmenfgarcia and @Dr_Blazquez.

The total impact of these three publications stands at more than 65 million Twitter users and nearly 150 interactions. Just like the brand’s official tweet, the impacted audience was mostly from Madrid and an equal mix of men and women.

Viral content is that which users wish to share with their followers, content which provokes an emotional response and catches our eye. This is the key to going viral and can only be described as what we know as “word-of-mouth”.

Are you thinking about creating a viral campaign? Drop us a line and we’ll help you with our recipe for success!