The Secret To Viral Content: Give It A Job That Benefits The Consumer (video)

We’d all love to create that piece of content that lights up the metrics meters on our website’s dashboard or Facebook Insights — comments, shares, clicks! But we know that the majority of content created today won’t hit that huge payoff. But what kind of content does?

Who knows viral better than BuzzFeed? Let’s learn from them.

In this TED Talk BuzzFeed’s publisher Dao Nguyen talks about cultural cartography and a way of thinking about content creation that turns typical brainstorming methods on their ear.

Stemming from an office prank involving baby goats and extending to a baking challenge that generated 70 million views, she talks about how the most viral content does a “job” for the consumer — it connects them, allows them to say “this is me,” makes them laugh, teaches them something, and a dozen more jobs.

While your goals for your inbound marketing program may be different from those of a media company like BuzzFeed, the goals of your content should be the same: To help your readers or viewers do a “job.” That is what makes your content effective at building your brand, building your search presence, and building sales.

And we wouldn’t be doing our job, if we didn’t offer you content that can help you do yours. That’s one reason we created our Rate Your Inbound Marketing Program scorecard. Download it to learn more about creating a great inbound program and to set goals for your marketing plan’s performance.