Viral content is inherently unpredictable.

You might have 2 similar pieces of content– with one getting thousands upon countless shares and the other suffering in obscurity.

In that regard, there’s no magic formula that will allow you to produce viral content on command.

It’s not like you can simply turn a switch and get mass exposure.

It doesn’t work like that.

However there are numerous things you can do to increase the possibilities of your material going viral

That’s what I want to discuss in this post.

More specifically, I’m going to discuss how you can utilize social listening to your benefit.

Social listening, defined as ” the process of keeping track of digital discussions to comprehend what clients are stating about a brand name and market online,” is most typically utilized for assessing consumer feedback and determining their discomfort points.

But I have actually also discovered it to be definitely perfect for predicting what my audience is craving and what’s most likely to go viral.

The way I see it, social listening is perhaps the very best method to anticipate virality.

Here is how you can utilize it to your benefit.

Successfully analyzing material

There’s a popular expression:

the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

Although this can be arguable, depending upon the context in which it’s used, you’ll desire to follow this line of thinking in this circumstances.

Like I stated previously, you can never ever say with 100?rtainty that a specific piece of material will go viral.

But what you can do is see what’s resonating the most with your audience at the minute.

If you notice that a specific subject, angle, style, etc. is completely killing it, there’s a likelihood you’ll see beneficial results if you cover it too.

But how do you know what’s popular and what’s resonating with your audience?

That’s where social listening comes in.

The key to effective social listening is knowing which tools to utilize.

I’m going to cover a few of my favorites you can use to find patterns and identify topics that have the prospective to go viral.

Google Trends

Let’s begin from the top.

I use Google Trends quite frequently for marketing research and for assessing people’s interest in numerous subjects.

However I discover it can likewise be useful for recognizing the most popular topics at any given minute.

For starters, you can simply go to the Google Trends homepage

Start scrolling down to see the leading trending stories:

Sometimes, this can provide you some possible concepts to work with.

Naturally, the trending stories aren’t limited by specific niche or topic, so you’re handling a variety of subject matter.

However in some cases that’s all it takes.

If you see something that intrigues you, click on it:

You’ll then get some of the most appropriate articles, which ought to provide further explanation on what’s popular at the minute:

In this case, a lot of individuals are speaking about Snapchat’s brand-new “Snap Map” function.

For That Reason, this could be something I would wish to examine additional and a prospective topic I might cover.

Using Top Charts

Another helpful feature is called “Top Charts.”

From the Google Trends homepage, click here:

Then click “Top Charts:”

Here’s what you’ll see:

Scroll to look at all the various classifications.

Or you can look for a pertinent category by clicking “All Categories” and choosing the one you’re searching for:

Once you have actually found your category, you can click “More” for more in-depth details:

The logic here is that you can utilize up-to-date data from Google to see what individuals are most interested in at the moment in your industry/niche.

Google Trends is by no means a be-all and end-all social listening tool, but it can work as a great beginning point.

Inbound.org

This is only suitable to digital marketers like myself.

However if this is your location of focus, it can be a possible cash cow.

Here’s what you want to do.

When you’re at the Inbound.org homepage, scroll all the way to the bottom.

You’ll see this:

Click on whatever sub-category you’re interested in.

I’ll go with SEO:

Here’s what I get:

Scroll through the list, trying to find concepts.

Inbound.org does the majority of the heavy lifting for you by curating the top stories.

Numerous have actually received a high volume of shares, so you know the interest it there.

Also note when you register, you can produce your own feed to improve the process even more.

In this manner the stories come right to you.

BuzzSumo

Now, let’s bring out the huge weapons.

BuzzSumo is a beast when it concerns discovering just how much engagement material receives.

And because engagement (shares in specific) is the ultimate indicator of virality, this is among the very best methods to profit from patterns and increase your odds of producing viral material.

Here’s what you wish to do.

Enter a keyword you’re looking to base your content on in the search box of your control panel.

I’ll utilize “SEO” as an example:

Now, set your filter date to a time that sounds ideal to you.

Because we wish to capitalize on present patterns, I advise going back no even more than six months.

Nevertheless, the past month or week is ideal.

You can even set it to the last 24 hours, however you’ll usually have actually restricted data.

I’ll set my own to the previous week:

When you do that, BuzzSumo will populate your screen with the leading content according to total shares.

Here are the top results I got:

Now all I have to do is check out the content and look for two things:

1. material that pertains to my industry/niche
2. material that’s received a considerable number of total shares and/or links.

This post from Online search engine Land about screening accelerated mobile pages (AMP) for WordPress caught my attention:

Not just did it get 1.5 k shares in the previous week, it also got 41 backlinks.

This lets me know that my audience is undoubtedly thinking about this topic.

And if I created a post that was bigger, better and more epic, it would have a sensible likelihood of going viral.

This is the formula you wish to use with BuzzSumo.

It doesn’t matter what subject you’re covering.

Following these actions will let you know what people are reacting to and offer you very particular information to base your choices on.

Let me state that the Pro variation is ideal due to the fact that it gives you a lot more information.

That’s what I used for this example.

Nevertheless, you can do a minimal search with the free variation, which can still work.

Other tools

Up until now I have actually supplied you with 3 different resources for social listening.

But that’s just the pointer of the iceberg.

There are a number of other tools you can try out, a lot of which are complimentary.

Have a look at this list of the top 15 totally free social networks monitoring tools from Brandwatch for information on other tools.

Taking what you have actually discovered and running with it

At this moment, you should have a pretty great concept of which topics are popular at the moment and what your audience is reacting to.

That means you’re not basing your material on an inkling. You’re basing it on tangible data.

Your task now is to create the finest content possible around that topic.

Now, I’m not saying you must blatantly rip somebody off.

What you desire to do is put your own spin on things.

Try to find a way to expand on it.

And, obviously, it needs to be remarkable.

It requires to be legendary

Just believe skyscraper technique

Hitting the mark in terms of quality and value is absolutely important if you anticipate for your material to go viral.

I’ve currently covered this thoroughly in the past, so there’s no need to talk about it here.

But let me point you to a couple of short articles I have actually composed that ought to be useful.

There’s this one from NeilPatel.com

It’s a guide for composing legendary content that will go viral.

And there’s this one from Quick Sprout, which is about the anatomy of virality.

Conclusion

Social listening is beneficial for various elements of marketing.

Utilizing it to determine your audience’s cumulative reaction to numerous topics will provide you an excellent concept of what type of topic is probably to go viral.

This gives you important understanding to guide your content production.

In turn, you can “scratch your audience’s itch” and provide what they’re looking for.

And simply think about the competitive benefit this gives you over other brand names that just slap up material at random without providing it any real idea.

While there are never any guarantees that something will go viral, following this formula increases the opportunities significantly.