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Objective: The objective of the content is to generate buzz about gun violence and increase awareness of gun violence incidents in america

Content Strategy: This will be done by users sharing hocking facts about gun violence in America, graphic pictures, along with emotional stories of someone that lost their life or was severally injured due to gun violence.

 

After strong research and learning about what makes content go viral, I am sure that the #AreYouNext content will be viral in nature for a variety of reasons. Surprisingly, there’s much more to making content go viral than luck. A lot of things need to be taken into consideration, for example the content itself and how you market the content. The #AreYouNext content is definitely worth going viral and how I plan to market the content on social media platforms will drastically help.

The content that brings high arousal emotions, whether positive or negative, is much more likely to go viral than content without any emotion. The chances of people sharing and engaging with content that has some type of emotion involved is high. There are seven high arousal emotions, which are awe, anger, anxiety, fear, lust, and surprise. I believe the #AreYouNext content incorporates a lot of these emotions. For one, the content deals a lot with the fear emotion. Fear is actually one of the greatest motivators on Earth. It targets the brain, and people cannot resist but to take action when encouraged with fear. The #AreYouNext content will trigger people to have fear because they will realize that anyone can be affected by gun violence. They will fear who will be the next victim due to gun violence and they will fear the lives of themselves and their loved ones because of the hashtag #AreYouNext. Along with fear is the anxiety emotion, people will start to get a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease when seeing an image of sweatshirt with multiple shots underneath the hashtag #AreYouNext. People will begin to question if they can become a victim and start to feel anxiety. Another high arousal emotion involved with the content is anger. When you frustrate people, they’ll work hard to reach justice. They’ll rant about it and their rants will cause other people to engage in the content as well. The #AreYouNext content will cause many people to be angry because they will be informed about all the innocent lives that were lost to senseless gun violence. They will be angry to know that guns are currently being placed in the wrong hands. In addition to being angry, people will be surprised. Content is much more likely to go viral when it consists of data with a surprising result. The hashtag #AreYouNext is something I believe people would consider to be shocking. It’s shocking because it makes the user question if they can be the next victim and questions if their life is at jeopardy, which not much content does. The #AreYouNext campaign was initially started because of the surprising fact that in the year of 2015, twice as many Americans have lost their lives or have been injured due to shootings from the previous year.
Besides the various high-arousal emotions that will be associated with the content, compelling content centers on one key detail, its sharability. People generally like to share things on social media that make them look good. The better it makes them look, the more likely they’ll be to share it. I believe people will want to take part in the #AreYouNext campaign because they would love to share stories of people who died or were injured due to gun violence and show their audience that they are taking part of a campaign that shows they care about making America a safer place. In addition, an important part to what allows content to go viral is getting people to engage. User generated content takes engagement farther than just sharing and makes it interactive. User generated content is one of the most popular viral marketing strategies in recent years. Rather than just tweeting a hashtag, people are sharing a story while sharing the content at the same time. Once their audience sees what someone is taking part of, they will naturally want to join. The more users that share their user generated content, the more viral the content will get. It helps the audience feel like they’re apart of the campaign and, of course, they get to share something, which people on social media love doing. The #AreYouNext campaign will include a lot of user generated content because people will have the opportunity to share their story of how a friend, family member, or even a stranger was affected by gun violence.
Last but not least, content with images are much more likely to be shared than content without. The #AreYouNext content is a gruesome picture, harsh pictures generate a buzz on social media and get people to engage. I am positive that the #AreYouNext content will go viral because of the severity and sensitivity of the topic. In addition, I made sure that the content only had an hashtag on it so that users will want to learn more about it and find out what exactly is #AreYouNext. Once they search the hashtag and see people sharing shocking stories and surprisingly facts, users will want to share the content, potentially making #AreYouNext go viral.