5 Ninja Methods for Creating Highly Viral Content

There’s no formula for guaranteed viral content on the web, yet the idea of getting your content seen by millions of people is very appealing. Who knows what could come of it: new business, opportunities to write for a health and fitness magazine, maybe even a guest appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres show?

While you can’t be sure your content will get a million-plus views, certain types of content go viral more often than others. Using examples from recent viral hits—tied with fitness—we have five pieces of potentially viral content for you to try. But first, here are some headline tips to hit it out of the park.

The Basics: Headlines

Several factors make a blog post or video go viral. While the content itself is important, the headline is most important. Here are a few tips to turn your headline into a hit:

• Evoke curiosity: I’m a Competitive Weight Lifter—I Don’t Train Every Day (Here’s Why)

• Evoke emotion: She Lost 40 Pounds and Her Job, but Got Her Life Back

• Make a promise: I Got Six-Pack Abs in 3 Months and You Can Too

Note each of these are focused on fitness. As you play with titles, and track traffic and engagement, you’ll recognize what gets your audience excited.

Now it’s time to create your viral content. Here are five ideas to try:

1. Write an Op-Ed

It seems like there’s a new topic up for debate every week. Take advantage by writing an article related to your line of work or close to your heart. While you risk coming under fire, you have an opportunity to go viral in a matter of hours.

Take this for example: Do you remember the Amazon employee who penned a LinkedIn post about the NY Times article, “Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace.” After the article had spread like wildfire, the Amazon employee’s response was next to go viral.

The response—published on LinkedIn—got more than 9,000 shares on the platform alone, and 8,000 more on Facebook. He cross-posted it on Medium, where it got another 500-plus shares.

The response garnered so much attention, the author added two disclaimers at the top of the page because of reader questions and comments. Published in August 2015, it's still relevant today—that’s the beauty of virality. Use your blog for an article like this; share it on your networks, then wait to see what happens.

2. Dabble in Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality isn't just for video games; you can use it for fitness too!

Virtual reality sounds like a thing of the future, but it’s actually a thing of our present. Businesses big and small are taking advantage, including Samsung and Facebook. The industry is supposed to reach 2.5 billion dollars in sales by 2017.

As a member of the fitness industry, you are one of many who can gain by getting into virtual reality while it’s in its infancy. Netpulse reported on three businesses using it to encourage people to workout more and better, and there are many more.

You may be thinking: I don’t have the budget for something like this. But that’s the beauty of it: virtual reality doesn’t require an expensive headset or high-tech equipment. It’s simply an immersive experience, where people can “interact” with the world they see in front of them.

As a trainer, you can use technology to create massive virtual workouts with people in your region, state, country, or around the world. Get enough attendees, and you just might go viral.

The process is simple: create a workout, get onto Google Hangouts or Skype, and host a virtual group workout with people who are in their living room, back yard, or even the gym. 

It may take some time to get traction. You might have many events where none or only a few people join. Nevertheless, it’s a great marketing opportunity and a fun way to increase your chances of going viral.

To gain more viral exposure, host the events in different places—from the beach, a different state, the top of a mountain, or more. When people don’t know “where” they’ll be working out, they may be more intrigued and get involved.

Don’t forget to post all videos on YouTube and your blog so you can share them afterward, attracting more people to join the fun.

3. Video Yourself

You are the perfect subject for a viral blog post. If you think back to some of the most popular viral videos, they feature regular people filming themselves doing something and posting it on YouTube. I’m sure you remember the video of the woman now known as “Chewbacca Mom” that now has more than 8 million views.

Chewbacca Mom’s video wasn’t intended to go viral, which teaches us an important lesson: video is big, people are watching, and you don’t have to be a celebrity or YouTube famous to be seen and go viral.

I recently came across an app called Zombie’s Run Game and immediately knew this could make a hilarious, potentially viral video. The idea is simple: you head out for a run with headphones on—as you normally would—but with this app, you also get a mission to defeat zombies in your area. As you run, zombie noises and more details play over your music. The closer they get, the louder they get, pushing you to go faster.

The key here is to film yourself with a GoPro (or similar camera), getting video of your face while zombies are chasing you. As they get closer, and you’re running, ducking, and dodging, you may catch something viral-worthy: I mean, who doesn’t love a good reaction video?

Similarly, you could put together a compilation of your most epic fails, if you film yourself while working out. This one may be harder to share—embarrassing, much?—but could attract a lot of attention if done right. Plus, when people see that EVEN YOU have flaws, they're more likely feel connected to you (because nobody's perfect, right?)

4. & 5. Know Your Audience and Hope for a Little Luck

Sometimes it takes a little luck to go viral.

Sometimes going viral just comes down to a little research and luck, and I learned this first-hand. After six months of managing a brand-new blog, I was just learning about what our audience liked and engaged with. I found they loved the meme-based articles I was posting from BuzzFeed, so I decided to create one for our blog.

After publishing on our blog and sharing on Facebook, the post had 300+ likes and just as many shares, proving my hypothesis. The next day I woke up to a broken blog because the post was picked up by a large brand and had more traffic than it could handle. Between a Tweet and sharing the post, we had more than one million page views in just a few days.

While there was some planning involved, ultimately what took this post to the next level was a large social media influencer picking it up. We didn’t ask them to do that. To this day (I created the post in May 2015), it’s the most popular article on our blog with 20,000 page views monthly.

Going viral isn’t easy, and it may never happen for you. But if you test ideas based on other viral hits, know what your audience of fitness-lovers wants, and allow luck to do its work, you just may get your week of fame.

How will you go viral? Let us know in the comments and share the tips with the buttons below!