Creating Viral Content

[Mattcarter08]

Hi, I’m currently building a brand new site in the fitness vertical. The site is brand new, no authority, and backlinks.

My goal is to turn it into a high end authority website, with organic traffic, and into a brand. My other goal is it to be purely organic growth, content driven. All my backlinks are natural. I don’t want to plead with other webmasters to link to me, whether it would be for guest posting or other questionable SEO tactics.

I understand that creating awesome content so people have a reason to visit and link to, is what I need, and it’s a long-term process.

I guess the part, in which I’m seeking advice/suggestions on is how do I go about creating awesome content which people link to and share.

I’m thinking of doing something like Movoto and bridging together the sites topic and current trends online.

For instance content on comparing North Korea average diet and how it compares to the US. Or who’s the fittest character on Games of Thrones. It’s relevant to the site and is current related to a hot trends.

However creating content which is designed to go viral can be quite costly and I don’t have unlimited pockets nor do most people. E.g. creating an awesome info graphic, collecting data, hiring a professional writer, getting professional images, etc. So you don’t really want to screw up.

So how can you reduce the risk? How do I go about it from a risk adverse angle?

I’m thinking I can find content which has been previously shared (had a pulse), repurpose the content (I remember Rand mentioned this in one of the white board Friday sessions, make it way better, use visuals, apps etc), then base some of my content decisions using this process.

I guess other ways – look at places like Reddit, bridging topic with current rends (as mentioned before), find popular forum topics, etc.

The goal of the content is:

1)    Content which naturally attract high quality links to the site, so it lifts up the other pages which don’t attract many links (through authority).

2)    Turn some of that viral traffic into long-term subscribers of the website, and repeat visitors.

3. Increase total search presence naturally

Any suggestions or insights into this question would be very much appreciated!

Thanks,

Matt

[TomRayner]

Hi Matt

First of all,  I'd like to say that you're well on your way.  You've got a great mindset for all of this and have already suggested two very good ideas on how to go about the content curation.   The content that you have in mind also looks to be very appealing.

Let's look at ways at how you can minimise the risk.  First of all, to limit cost, you may want to look at creating the content yourself.  It could still take time, but have a look at sites like Easel.ly, Visual,ly and Infogr.am.  All sites are free and come with some nice interfaces and graphics that can help you to at least visualise your post. I'm also a big fan of Timeline JS, which adds an interactive element to an infographic.

Another way to minimise risk would be to get a brief from a great site or news source before you put the content together.  That way you know that, provided that the content is useful, it has a very high chance of being picked up.

For this, I absolutely love using Help A Reporter Out (HARO) - it's a service that puts you in touch with reporters looking for expertise to feature in their content.  I can tell you now that the health & fitness section is buzzing with requests 2-3 times daily and you often get some very big websites and news sources looking for a hand.  Definitely get in there and make a name for yourself.

Like I said, I think you're approaching this in exactly the right way.  Hopefully these links can help you out too.  Furthermore, I'd certainly look at creating video content, especially for a viral effect.  Not only does health and fitness simply lend itself perfectly for video content (who doesn't like looking at pretty people?), I think there's definite room in the market for a self-depreciating or mickey-taking spin on the industry.  You have your gym junkies and your obsessive dieters and the like - there's as much ego in that industry as there is in SEO! There might be an opportunity to poke fun at it slightly, while still producing some great and useful content for you and your audience.

All the best with everything and keep us up to date, would love to see how you progress!

[EGOL]

This is the approach that I am using.  I spend all of my time creating content.

It is a really really slow way to start but every bit of content that you get up starts to pull in a little traffic and after you have done that for a while it starts to build momentum.

I would focus on the following types of content...

-- misconceptions (these surprise people and can get shared)

-- basic knowledge explained exceptionally well (if you can do this in best-on-the-web quality it can get shared widely - but slowly)

-- things that everyone should know but most people don't know (how to select mountain bike tires for sand vs mud vs gravel vs pavement)

-- demonstrations (how to change a mountain bike tire in 50 seconds)

-- stuff that pisses people off  (how to prevent flats... focusing on rim strips, spoke ends, tire selection, tire inspection, inflation, what to avoid hitting)

-- stuff that surprises...  (the number of calories required to finish an ultradistance triathlon and the amount that must be consumed on the road to keep from bonking...  on top of that there is the liquid requirement - which varies by race day air temp - very different approaches for 50 degree race day in Montreal and a 90 degree race day in Florida)

It is really rare to have something go viral.  I shoot for things that are simply good content that people will share if they like it.