The literal meaning of “going viral”, is that your content has stirred up the audience so enormously, that it’s spreading like fire. It ends up being the very latest big thing on the Internet. It happens when your content is getting liked, retweeted, commented on, shared, blogged on, and is being talked about by everyone in the industry – something that earns you more views than you would ever have imagined.

The things mentioned above are nothing but a powerful result for your content and the brand’s reputation. However, it is rather unrealistic to make content viral just like that. What one should concentrate on is to make the content the most informative, fascinating and the most interesting online experience for their audience. Going viral is not at all about good fortune or luck. Instead a number of things go into it. This post is about how we turned an idea into one of the most comprehensive post for the SEO fraternity, which will be looked forward to as a very valuable and helpful source of study by experts and amateurs alike.

How it all started?

Our team was having a discussion on what is it that the SEO’s all around the world would be looking forward to know. Something that could prove to be a valuable resource and at the same time, budding SEO’s could actually come to know what are those things that their SEO idols do. The first thing one would like to know is their way of working. This includes a number of things, but what really drives our curiosity is the tools/plugins that they work with.

SEO Plugins are one the most compelling things in this industry, and to know which ones are being used by the prominent names in the industry would prove to be a boon for everyone. This gave us an idea of getting in touch with all the SEO experts around the globe and ask them what is it, in terms of plugins that they can’t live without while SEOing. We asked just one simple question:

“Which are those 3 SEO Browser Plugins/Extensions you simply can’t work without?”

Identifying the Participants

We knew that the answers to these questions would be looked upon as a valuable source to all experts and budding SEO’s alike. The question was simple, yet curiosity driving. The answers to these questions were all set to become valuable assets not only for us, but also for those who would be accessing them. This drove us to get the answers straight from the horses’ mouth. The people who are considered to be the assets of the SEO industry, contributing their valued information for the well-being of other co-SEO’s. Sounds like a great idea? Read on…

We made a list of all stalwarts in the online marketing industry who are considered to be the trend-setters. Those people who were regularly coming up with new posts, blogs and videos to educate people on SEO were the first choice, as many are looking forward to their advice on various aspects of the industry. This made the team prepare a whopping list of 280 experts for this post. We acquired their e-mails from their websites and social media and started sending them personalized emails.

Unfortunately, almost 38% of those on the list were unable to contribute, maybe because of a very tight schedule. However, we were overwhelmed to see the responses appearing on our inbox from the rest.

The Response

What we got in response, made us go dumbstruck! We had never imagined that 105 SEO experts would actually be gracious enough to share their favorite SEO plugins, and let the world know their desktop secrets. It was this massive response that made our endeavor a successful one. We received their contributions in absolutely no time after asking them the question. The contributors have actually helped in making this post viral.

The Contributors

All those in the SEO industry, would be able to identify the names of the contributors at once. Saying anything about these prominent names, would be an understatement.

The Making of the Post

As soon as we got the response, we started organizing all the data that had been received from all the contributors. We also filtered out the top 5 plugins, those which appeared commonly in all the contributions. This serves the purpose for all those who are looking for the top plugins used by SEO experts around the globe. The next thing was to make a compilation of all the feedback and present it along with the post. The idea behind the whole process is to come up with a post that could prove to be a valuable resource for eternity.

The team did exactly the same, and the post was created that carried pictures and messages of all the successful SEO experts. The idea behind the whole post was simple:

Know the Flow: One of the most important things to get the desired response for a post is that it should touch the audience in some way. The content has to inspire awe and trigger curiosity. The motive was to set an awakening, broadening of knowledge which could be cherished for a long time.

Value: The post should be used as an informative source that helps others in improve on their SEO tasks, understand things better and make valued decisions with the help of the information available.

Eventually, the team came up with a compelling post which was all set to create a buzz in the SEO industry.

Promoting the Post

It wasn’t very tough as the post itself is a guide for all those who want to know the best tools in the market to perform various SEO activities.

The reason why I am writing this particular post is because I wanted to share an idea. An idea, that if you have a valuable, an informative, and an engaging resource on hand there isn’t much marketing required, as it has all the capabilities of going viral. The post was an initiative to educate people, and the purpose was received very well by all the contributors. Half the job was done by them as they started sharing this post throughout their network. This made the post spread faster than lightning, and the count of visits was ticking up with each passing day.

We did not resort to any paid advertising. Instead we decided to promote it through our social profiles and it started spreading like wildfire. Read on to know the social networking figures.

The Virality

The team had never imagined that what started out as a mere idea to create a post to help out, would prove to be a massive hit among its readers. The post proved to be so successful, that it started receiving a stream of appreciating comments from all over. The count of likes, tweets and shares started going up with each passing day, and we are still counting.

All those who have read this, find it to be the most comprehensive and a very useful guide for those who would like to try out new plugins for their SEO projects. People are actually asking us for more of such posts which could give industry insights. We could now say that this post has actually turned out to be a linkable asset for us, for the number of times it is being shared on social networks.

Success Factors

I know very well, what you are looking out from the SEO’s perspective. Here are some of the most popular counts. Before mentioning them I would like to mention that this count is at the time of writing this segment of the post.

• Links:   50+ including one from Search Engine Land
• Google+ 1s:   437
• Linkedin Shares:   149
• Tweets:   375
• Facebook:   238

And, if you want to have a look at the number of visits here is the graph. On the very next day of putting the post live we were overwhelmed to see the number of visits.

This was meant to be just that – another post. We had never thought that we would come up with a post that would manage to create a buzz.

Conclusion

Creating survey posts like this could take a lot of time, and the responses could be long-time pending from those whom you requested.

However, once you have created one, you’ll get tons of comments, shares and likes if found useful by your readers. By conducting surveys like this one, you and your readers could find out how your idols work, and also this shows what the audience is looking for. This response could serve as a platform to come up with more compelling posts and surveys.

Guest Author: Sanket Patel is the Founder of Blurbpoint.com, a leading Internet Marketing Company specializing in content marketing and SEO Services. He has extensively researched on the ultimate recovery process of Panda/Penguin which is working successfully these days.