In todays viral age, it seems like each day launches a new obscure singer to fame or gives a writer more readers than they could ever expect. But do these people really know when their posts are going to ‘go viral’? They can’t, it’s impossible to. As Adrian said in the symposium, there’s no way of predicting in advance what will matter to readers and what won’t. All the writer/singer/photographer can do is post it, and hope that there’s some kind of a response. Of course, you can follow trends and use tags and find ways to put your blog out there, but there’s no real formula to that. You think navy is going to be the new black? Chances are, Vogue will scoop you on that and no one will care what you have to write about it. Your dog makes sounds like a parakeet? Awesome. 675,987 hits on YouTube in an hour. In this interview with Teen Vogue, some musicians who went viral offer their stories, with one admitting he mainly just posted the video to show his friends, and that he was ‘very lucky’.
Even if you write a scathing opinion piece about ISIS, post a video of yourself remixing a hot new artist’s song, or whatever the hot ’thing’ of the moment is, it just isn’t possible to predict whether people will connect or even really care about what you have to say.
Below, you’ll find a video explaining how exactly to make a viral video, brought to my attention by Gemma Watts
