Jazz up your viral site

Have you heard the word “meme” before? Meme were to begin with a academic word to describe the cultural development in the mid 70s. Meme is something that is shared between individuals in a society and includes Tamagotchis and expressions like “That’s what she said”. Today memes are more up-to-date than ever due to viral online content.

Swedish telecom company Comhem based their most recent commercials up on familiar viral clips and TV-series and there are some points that viral successes have in common. We listed a few of them that we consider extra important beyond the obvious features of sharing. At mashable.com you can read about more tips on how to make you viral site a big success.

• Keep the content simple and easy to engage with but do not forget to add a twist. Site navigation and ‘share this-applications’ makes it easier for visitors to take part of the content and share it with others.

• Make sure your visitors get emotionally engaged to your content. Empathy is the best emotion you can create and the feeling that most likely will trigger your visitors to spread your content.

• A viral media site is not about you entering the stage to deliver while the public passively consume. Consider your work as a joint activity and share your digital space with your audience. Offer the visitors the possibility to create their own content as applications, t-shirts or playlists.

• The only reason “Chuck Norris facts” exists is because the creator (that also wrote “Van Diesel facts”) asked his audience: “What do you want?”

• Most viral successes grow organically in terms of shares. This means they did not became stars over a night. Have patience and prepare yourself for some hard work.