“Going viral” seems like a simple task -right? Just spread an image, video or link rapidly through the internet. How hard can it be?
Yes, going viral may seem like an easy task, however, I learned just how much goes into it. The viral content challenge was my first attempt at “going viral” and I feel that my campaign was successful.
Background:
Because images, links and videos are constantly being shared across social media platforms and “going viral”, I decided to create a timeless meme. Everyone loves going out for dinner and enjoying a nice meal. Even better is realizing at a later time that you have leftovers sitting in your fridge. I thought by choosing the topic of food, I can relate to a wide range of audience. I also chose an image that I thought would be appealing to others and make everyone laugh.
Meme:
Realizing you have leftovers in the fridge is the best. Who is with me?
Objective:
When I started the challenge, my objectives were to reach 500 views or more on imgur and to get at least 10 engagements on twitter. I was able to reach both of these goals.
Twitter WebCard Tweet:
Just opened my fridge to some leftovers and couldn't be happier. Who can relate? #meme #nhsmc #food #yes #leftovers
— Emily Feller (@EmilyFellerr) November 5, 2018
Twitter Ads Engagement and Spend:
Analysis:
Overall, I believe that my campaign was successful. By the end of the campaign my meme received 996 views on Imgur and 47,733 impressions on Twitter. I received 500 views on Imgur within the first 24 hours of my campaign which was surprising. I believe that within those first 24 hours, I was able to reach and connect to the most amount of people.
On Imgur, I used 6 different hashtags which I believe really helped my meme reach viewers. I also found my Webcard to be extremely successful. My Webcard was created at the start of my campaign and my 5 dollars were used within the first day of the campaign. I think promoting my campaign at the beginning was a great strategy.
Being someone with about 40 followers, I was amazed to see my promoted tweet reach such a large amount of viewers and gain over 40,000 impressions. My tweet got 10 retweets, 85 likes and 5 comments. This was exciting as my tweets usually get only a few likes and comments from time to time.
Within the first 24-48 hours, views were coming in extremely fast. I caught myself constantly refreshing Imgur just to keep up with the latest view count. Views then began to slow down throughout the rest of my campaign no matter how many times I posted via social media. A majority of the rest of my views were coming from Twitter.
On Twitter I used hashtags related to memes, food and being happy. Looking back, I did find myself using the same and very similar hashtags. This is defiantly something to improve upon in the future as using different hashtags could have given me the opportunity to reach different types of audiences.
Another challenge that I faced was within Twitter. As I continued to post on Twitter, I found each post to be getting less and less engagement from my followers. This is when I decided to change up the platform and post on Snapchat. Snapchat is a social media platform that is extremely popular and one in which I have hundreds of friends on. I posted a picture of the meme and added the link to the Imgur image with the swipe up feature. I posted the snapchat to my story as well as sent it to everyone in my snapchat contacts. I then did the same with Instagram Story. Both of these platforms allowed me to reach many different friends that do not have twitter. As a result I received a decent amount of views. In future campaigns I will defiantly utilize as many social media platforms as I can to expand my reach.
I am extremely thrilled with the results of my first social media campaign. This assignment taught me so much about vitality, promoting and posting on different social media platforms. I felt it challenged me to be a more creative thinker. This assignment gave me skills and knowledge that will allow me to run future campaigns and successfully make an image, video or link go viral.