How to Create Viral Content: Strategies to Attract Attention and Shares

Introduction

Navigating the digital world can be a challenge, especially when it comes to creating viral content. By definition, viral content is a post that has been shared massively and quickly on the internet. It’s the Holy Grail for digital marketing specialists, because it means huge reach without the additional costs associated with paid ads. It is, however, important to note that there is no magic recipe for creating content that will go viral. What goes viral is often unpredictable, but there are certain methods and strategies you can use to increase your chances of success.

Understanding the target audience

The first step to creating viral content is understanding who you are addressing. It is crucial to know what types of content your audience likes and shares. Demographic factors such as age, gender, economic situation, geographic location, and interests can greatly influence the types of content your audience will appreciate. By understanding your audience, you can create content that resonates with them, which will increase the sharing potential and the possibility that your content becomes viral.

Creating valuable content

The content you create must have some value for the audience. It may be entertaining content, educational content, inspiring content, or even content that creates a certain form of emotional connection. Whatever it is, the audience must have a reason to share your content. This may be because they think their friends will find it interesting, funny or useful. The more valuable your content is, the more likely it is to be shared and to go viral.

html

Understanding the psychological drivers of virality

Before even talking about algorithms or formats, it is essential to look at what prompts an individual to click Share. Virality isn’t just a technical property: it is first and foremost a human phenomenon. Researchers Jonah Berger and Katherine Milkman, in their award-winning study at Wharton, showed that high-intensity emotions — admiration, surprise, anger, anxiety or joy — multiply the likelihood that a content is passed on. In other words, a 100 % rational article is less likely to go viral than a story that strikes an emotional chord.

Take the example of the documentary « C’était un rendez-vous by Claude Lelouch, brought back into the spotlight by YouTube decades after it was filmed. Its long takes shot at high speed in Paris simultaneously provoke tension (fear) and wonder (admiration), an emotional cocktail that naturally encourages you to send it to a friend. In the same way, the #IceBucketChallenge phenomenon rode on joy (a fun challenge) mixed with compassion (the fight against ALS), two complementary emotions capable of transcending cultural barriers.

Social identity theory

Another key driver is social identity: we often share what reflects the image we want to project. The « Share a Coke campaign, which offered personalised cans with first names, perfectly illustrates ego-sharing: posting a photo of your can labelled Camille on Instagram amounts to saying « this is who I am . In B2B as in B2C, incorporating an identity marker — an internal language known to a community, a symbol or an inside joke — increases the propensity to share.

Telling a story rather than selling a product

Storytelling remains the ultimate weapon. On TikTok, American influencer Elyse Myers surpassed 20 million views with her video The Worst First Date Ever — three minutes, a very simple setting, but a three-act narrative that could rival a romantic comedy. This success confirms Brent Dykes’s theory (Effective Data Storytelling): our brain retains 22 times more information when it is presented in the form of a story.

For brands, turning the product demonstration into a heroic narrative is possible, regardless of the sector. GoPro, for example, doesn’t sell a camera; it broadcasts stories of surfers taking on gigantic waves or firefighters saving a cat. The result: each video becomes an emotional showcase that users want to share in order to take part in the collective story.

The 6-step narrative arc

1. Initial situation: set the scene; 2. Inciting incident: an unexpected element disrupts the routine; 3. Quest: the protagonist pursues a goal; 4. Obstacles: tension, twists and turns; 5. Climax: a decisive moment charged with emotion; 6. Resolution & moral. BuzzFeed’s Tasty videos compress these six steps into under a minute, generating hundreds of millions of shares. Understanding this narrative skeleton helps replicate the mechanism, whether you are telling a SaaS success story or how to make homemade bread.

Riding on curiosity: the information gap

Behavioural economist George Loewenstein theorised the curiosity gap: we are physiologically uncomfortable when we know that information exists but we do not yet possess it. Upworthy headlines long exploited this bias (She Opened Her Mouth. Seconds Later, Everyone Stood Up.) and despite changes in algorithms, the formula remains valid if you actually deliver on the promise.

The media outlet Konbini uses it in its YouTube thumbnails: He ran 42 km in the desert with only…. Impossible not to click to find out with only what?. The challenge, however, is not to slip into toxic clickbait; sustainable viral content respects the 3C rule: Clarity, Credibility, Concrete. Don’t reveal everything, but deliver enough to remain honest.

Choose the ideal format for each platform

The common mistake is to publish the same content across all networks. Yet the concept of virality varies: on TikTok, completion rate and loop replays are king; on Twitter, it’s the punchline and the discussion; on LinkedIn, perceived value and the author’s authority. The creators of the Kurzgesagt channel understood this: their long, animated videos smash it on YouTube, while they sum everything up in visual threads on Twitter, creating two opportunities for virality from a single topic.

TikTok: the algorithm’s laboratory

A mobile-first format, 15 seconds to hook, burned-in subtitles for viewing without sound, and a perfectly identified audio trend: these are the ingredients the French start-up Respire used to push its solid deodorant video to over 2 million organic views. The brand then recycled the clip into an Instagram Reel to maximise the content’s lifespan.

LinkedIn: intellectual trigger and social proof

On LinkedIn, consultant Nicolas Beau published a carousel titled Why 87 % of pitch decks fail. Instead of simple text, he offered a free mini-course in ten slides, referenced data from Harvard Business Review and ended with a call-to-action (Download the template). More than 12,000 shares and a doubling of his subscriber base in two weeks: proof that virality there goes through documentary value.

Timing: the art of newsjacking and the window of opportunity

In marketing, temporal relevance can multiply organic reach tenfold. During the Facebook & Instagram blackout in 2021, the eyewear brand Polette tweeted a simple visual Finally a reason to look up, riding the news in under thirty minutes. Result: 30,000 RTs for an SME of 80 employees. The feat comes down to responsiveness: the shorter the gap between the event and your content, the more powerful the emotional lever (often humour) is.

Conversely, evergreen formats exploit recurrence. Every 4 May, the Star Wars saga resurfaces with May the 4th be with you. Brands like Oreo prepare reusable visuals for a fixed date, increasing the likelihood of trending every year. This strategy offers a passive income of virality.

Strengthen the hook and the micro-viral structure

The hook is the first sentence, facial expression or image that triggers the stop-scroll. In the video Damn, Daniel! (2016), the repeated catchphrase by Daniel’s friend creates an instantly memorable audio signature. This repetition is a share trigger: people share so others understand the reference.

Micro-viral structure in three layers: 1) Visual/audio hook; 2) Quick payoff (a few seconds); 3) Added value or final punchline. Twitter threads by author Sam Parr work like this: a shocking first tweet (Shopify was worth 169 $… in 2016), evidence (Here’s the screenshot of the share price), then a mini-course (Here’s how they 100× their revenue). This architecture reduces sharing friction, because each part can be screenshotted independently.

Collaborations, memes and participatory culture

Co-creations with influencers amplify the network effect. When fashion brand Ader Error teamed up with YouTuber PewDiePie for a limited hoodie, it benefited simultaneously from meme virality and product scarcity: sold out in 25 minutes, 50,000 tweets about the collaboration.

When it comes to memes, the key is to let the audience appropriate the visual. Distracted Boyfriend blew up because any community manager could drop in their own logo and reinvent the joke. Netflix, by tweeting the Netflix / chores / me version, generated 400,000 likes — not by creating an original meme, but by skilfully slotting into the existing format.

Analyse, test and iterate: data in the service of creativity

Virality isn’t a game of chance. The New York Times has a Reader Insights team that studies social signals in real time: scroll rate, share/click ratio, number of URL copies to the clipboard. This granularity allowed them to identify recurring narrative angles (interactive maps, personal quizzes) capable of quadrupling shares.

Free tools such as CrowdTangle, Google Trends and even native Analytics already offer gems. Real example: the Lyon-based start-up GreenGot spotted, via Google Trends, a spike in searches for ethical bank after the Amazon fires. They promptly published an Instagram thread explaining banking deforestation, reaching 15 % engagement, i.e. 5× their usual average, before turning these insights into an e-book capturing 12,000 emails.

Creative A/B testing

On YouTube, MrBeast sometimes deliberately posts several thumbnails during the first 30 minutes to see which gets the best click-through rate, then locks in the winner. This scientific approach can be miniaturised: test two opening lines of a newsletter via a Mailchimp split send, or post two versions of a visual at the same time on an Instagram story and observe the reaction to the poll sticker.

The ethics of virality: beware of excesses

Creating viral content must not mean spreading misinformation or anxiety. The Momo Challenge case (2019) proves that a phenomenon can go viral without being real, fuelled by fear and a lack of verification. In the long term, this kind of negative virality damages the creator’s credibility and can lead to tighter regulation — see the anti-fake news laws in France and the Digital Services Act in Europe.

Brands therefore have an interest in putting in place a fact-check protocol. At Brut, each video goes through three checks before publication. Result: despite an engaged tone, they maintain a high trust index and avoid the algorithm’s sanction, which de-prioritises reported content.

Detailed case studies

#IceBucketChallenge: the emotional + simplicity combination

The ALS Association was aiming for 1 million $; it would end up raising more than 115 million. Why? 1) A challenge that’s very easy to understand; 2) Short videos suited to Facebook (then booming); 3) Name-check call-outs (I nominate X, Y, Z) creating a snowball effect; 4) An empathetic cause. Harvard researchers identified an underestimated factor: costly signalling theory — pouring ice-cold water over your head implicitly proves your determination, reinforcing perceived sincerity.

Damn, Daniel!: when repetition becomes a jingle

A succession of Snapchats edited into a compilation, a simple compliment (Damn, Daniel!), and a zoom on white trainers. Yet the expression embedded itself in pop culture, to the point that Vans offered young Daniel a lifetime supply of shoes. This example shows that a sound signature or a memorable phrase can be enough, if it is authentic, to break beyond the fringe of a network (Vine) and spread to national television (The Ellen DeGeneres Show).

Share a Coke: mass personalisation

In 2011, Coca-Cola replaced its logo with 150 first names. Each bottle becomes a potential message. On Instagram, the hunt for a bottle with your own name turns consumers into ambassadors. The key was logistical (variable digital printing) but above all psychological: personalisation increases perceived value by 70 %, according to a Deloitte study. Virality and business meet: +2.5 % in sales in a previously declining market.

BuzzFeed What City Should You Actually Live In?: the glorification of self-assessment

Shared more than 20 million times, this quiz banks on the Barnum effect (this result describes me perfectly). The content offers an identity reward (telling you who you are) and a ready-to-use visual for Facebook. For brands, reproducing this mechanism can take the form of a personality test (What type of investor are you?) or a simulator (Calculate your carbon footprint), provided it delivers something shareable.

Practical checklist before publishing

• Does my title or thumbnail trigger a strong emotion or irresistible curiosity?
• Is the hook in the first three seconds crystal clear?
• Does my content really deliver on the promise made?
• Have I integrated an element of social identity or personalisation?
• Does the structure encourage native sharing (buttons, name-check call-out, encouragement to tag)?
• Am I aligned with the platform’s culture and timing?
• Can quick A/B tests improve performance?
• Is the fact-checking flawless?
• Is the content accessible (subtitles, contrast, alt text) and inclusive?

Conclusion: combining creativity, data and responsibility

Virality is no longer an enigma reserved for a chosen few. It is based on an alchemy between human psychology, knowledge of platforms, creative execution and ongoing analysis. Past successes — from a charity challenge to a simple cult phrase — show that there is no single template, but an adaptable framework for interpretation. Keeping in mind ethics and the value one truly brings to the audience, every creator or brand can aspire to produce the next piece of content that the whole world will share. The question is therefore no longer Can one go viral?, but What impact do we really wish to leave when our content explodes beyond our circle?.

You may also be interested in these articles:

Long-form content strategies: Why they can improve your rankings How to create Evergreen Content: Articles that stay relevant over time Content Strategies for Mobile Users: How to Adapt Your Content SEO and Mobile-First Design: How to adapt your website to mobile users The Impact of Real-Time Search Trends on Your Site Content