miercuri, 9 octombrie 2013

Want a Viral Hit? Here Is an Inside Look at Our Ideation Process

Want a Viral Hit? Here Is an Inside Look at Our Ideation Process

Want a Viral Hit? Here Is an Inside Look at Our Ideation Process

Posted: 08 Oct 2013 05:18 PM PDT

Posted by KelseyLibert

This post was co-authored by Kristin Tynski, VP Creative at Frac.tl and Kelsey Libert, Director of Promotions.

The importance of the idea

When it comes to creating viral content, if you don't have an exceptional idea, you are dead in the water. Even if you're able to execute production at a very high level and promote your content with the best of them, if the idea doesn't check all the boxes of viral content, you're toast. So, given you understand what a viral idea might look like, how do you bridge the gap between theory and actually coming up with one of these truly viral ideas? What follows is the process we use here at Fractl to come up with ideas that we feel confident will find viral success.

Defining parameters

We approach our ideation task as we would a riddle. Think of it this way: You are given a set of known parameters, and you must find an answer that elegantly satisfies all of those parameters. The difference here is that there's more than just one correct answer. In fact, there are usually many answers that'll fit. So what are your primary defining parameters? In nearly all cases the primary parameters I follow include:

  1. The idea must play well with the brand/product/service topic area. It must also fit the constraints of the client. Decide beforehand if your ideas can be broadly related to a niche or topic area, or if they must be more constrained.
  2. The idea must contain an emotionally compelling hook as described in my last post. More specifically, it must evoke feelings of surprise and interest, which are generally essential to a successful viral idea.
  3. The idea must contain something original or new, and it's even better if it's newsworthy. From a content promotion and syndication perspective, having an idea that presents new information will make it much more likely to be picked up by mainstream blogs and news sites.
  4. The related concepts should have some proof of past viral engagement. Can you point to some other piece of content and use it as a basis for predicting the success of your own content?
Be sure to keep these questions in mind as you begin your brainstorming; you will use them to keep your ideation on track.

Step 1: The research dump

It just so happens I have some ideation to do for one of Fractl's clients, Rehabs.com, so I'm going to use it as an example to bring you through my research techniques and ideation process. The vertical/topic area we're going after this time is "eating disorders." From talking with this client, I know they are willing to stretch the topic area to a certain extent, so my ideation will keep this in mind, and I might go a bit broader in terms of how closely the content I come up with relates exactly to eating disorders.

Generally, the best way to begin ideation for any viral content marketing project is to first spend the time to gather all you can about the topic area and collect what sorts of things are currently buzzworthy or have been in the past. Begin by understanding your topic area in a general way, and then use that topic area as a basis for your ideation. I usually make a list of possible ideas by finding as many popular news stories and blog posts around my general topic area as I can.

I copy down this research in the first tab of my ideation document.

I go to the places online that allow for both content curation and the ability to organize that content by what has already been popular. The places I usually use are as follows:

  1. Reddit: Try doing a simple search for about 3 to 5 keywords related to your topical area. In this case I would try eating disorders, body image, bulimia, and anorexia. For each keyword, I would organize the Reddit results by "top" and set the date range to "all-time," giving me a curated list of content that's ranked from most engaging to least. I then look through each list and pull out the stories that seem like they might be at least marginally interesting. Additionally, when I do these searches, I take note of the subreddits that pop up, often you will find niche communities related to your topic, go to each of these subreddits, and organize by top-all-time, to find the stories that have been most popular within these sub-niches as well. For example, searching "body image" on reddit showed me a subreddit called r/bodyacceptance, which I never knew existed, but seems quite active. Many of their top stories are a great place to start for viral content ideas.
  2. Google: Try searching for (Viral + Keyword) and look for other instances of viral campaigns that have been successful. Add as many of these as you can find to your list.
  3. Trendhunter: Trendhunter does a good job of picking up on trending concepts and ideas that can be searched by keywords. Try searching for your keywords and then list the interesting URLs in your brainstorming dump list.
  4. BuzzFeed: BuzzFeed does a good job with conceptualizing viral ideas. They also have an effective search tool to find these posts. Put these in your list, too.
  5. Latest research: Try searching Google Scholar or Pubmed Search. You can segment your search by date, so try to use content from the past year for fresher stories.
  6. Latest news: Google News, organized by date, can yield a good overview of what newspapers and online news sites are covering most around your topic area.
  7. Datasets: Listing all possible datasets out there would take a long time, but I usually check out this Quora post to see if there is anything that jumps out to me as being applicable to the topic area I'm looking at. Also, https://explore.data.gov/ is a great place to do a few keyword searches to see if anything pops up as well. Reddit also has an active dataset subreddit that is worth looking at. You can also try a search at ZanRan.com, which can sometimes give some good results as well.
Still stuck?

Here are a few other places you can go if you are still having trouble filling out your research dump:

Step 2: extracting themes

Once you have done a considerable amount of research and feel you've found the bulk of the most talked about stories related to your topic, you're ready to begin an overview analysis of the specific common sub-topics that seem to have a unique potential for further investigation. Go through each of the examples you have listed in your research dump and try to boil them down and label them under general subtopics. You will likely start to see several subtopics that seem to be the most talked about. These should be the subtopics you ideate around. For our example with Rehabs.com, the common subtopics I found were:

  • Men and eating disorders
  • The role of mass media in body image
  • The role of marketing and advertising in body image
  • Eating disorders as represented in Internet culture
  • Real life stories of the afflicted
  • Body image and happiness
  • Eating disorder and body image memes

Step 3: ideating laterally on extracted themes

Using the extracted themes, the next step is the actual ideation phase, where we look to explore the different content ideas that will fit within each of these subtopic areas that we have identified as buzzworthy candidates. While doing ideation, I pay particularly close attention to ideas that fit my predefined set of parameters that were clearly defined before starting the ideation process.

As I mentioned in my last post, strong emotional reactions of interest and surprise are absolutely essential in creating a viral effect. In order to activate these emotions, your goal should be to come up with an idea that presents something unexpected, counterintuitive, or completely novel.

Coming up with ideas of this sort requires what is known as "lateral thinking." This type of creative thinking happens when we are able to connect seemingly disparate ideas in new ways. It also happens when we realize how innovations in one area could also be applied to another area. Fortunately, there are several ways to prime your brain to think in this sort of way. I'm going to switch gears and move on from the Rehabs.com example in order to illustrate these brainstorming methods. I've found it can be effective to "warm up" your brain by thinking creatively on other topics first, before moving on to your actual ideation task.

1. Connecting Random Ideas

You can begin your warmup with nearly any topic area. I prefer a seemingly mundane topic for warmup, so that when I switch back to my actual ideation task, it feels easier. So, lets start with something seemingly boring, how about lighting equipment. For this exercise in lateral thinking, we'll select either three random objects around the room or three random words from a dictionary. For this example, let's go with a soda bottle, which is currently sitting next to me on my desk. Our goal now is to try to come up with ideas that connect a soda bottle with our general topical area of lighting equipment in a way that makes sense and is unexpected, counterintuitive, or novel.

Let's start with the soda bottle. How does it relate to lighting? At first you might not think it does, but keep thinking and start asking questions. Could a bottle be somehow used as a light? Hmm ... the answer is yes! After a quick Google search, we find this gem. It turns out that water bottles are being used effectively in the third world as makeshift skylights, and it works incredibly well! Now we can extrapolate on this idea. Keep asking questions. What are the implications of this innovation? What does this mean for populations that prior to this innovation had no lighting? The article says it might actually save lives by reducing the fire risk associated with these populations being forced to use candles. Could we create a piece of content that attempts to quantify the benefits of this innovation in some way?

Keep going by taking another tack; ask more questions. For instance, are there other types of lighting implements that utilize trash like empty soda bottles? Let's find out! Yep, there sure are. But this isn't an original idea, so how can we make it original? Keep asking questions. How were these created? How could we add value here? What if we created content that showed how to do these types of projects yourself? Make sure to write down your ideas, but keep going until you have exhausted all the ideas associated with your original item (the water bottle).

The truth is that your mind is inherently extremely creativeâ€"all you need to do is give it the fuel, and it will begin working on its own. Give your brain two things to connect, and it will start figuring out how it might be done.

2. Provocation technique

This lateral thinking technique relies on opening your mind to new possibilities by abandoning your assumptions and asking, "What if?" Your goal here should be to think widely and in an exaggerated way that steps outside of what is logically possible. By doing this, you can create a bridge to unexpected connections and extremely innovative ideas. This can be done in 5 primary ways:

Escape: Negate what you have taken for granted about the topic.

Reversal: Reverse something you have taken for granted about the topic.

Exaggeration: Is there a numerical or quantitative element you can play with to arrive at new ideas?

Distortion: Try to distort one piece of something you take for granted about the topic.

Wishful thinking: Suggest a fantasy you know isn't possible that relates to your topic.

As you go through these exercises, remember to keep asking yourself questions. You can use the following checklist as you go:

  • What would the consequences be?

  • What would the benefits be?

  • What special circumstances would make it a sensible solution?

  • What principles are needed to support it and make it work?

  • How would it work moment-to-moment?

  • What would happen if a sequence of events was changed?

Let's try this technique with our example of lighting:

Escape: We take for granted the permanence of indoor lighting. What if it wasn't permanent? What if the U.S. was subjected to the rolling blackouts seen in many developing countries? What would the impact be? Could we create a piece of content that would explore this scenario? Can we extrapolate on current research about the importance of consistent electricity to make it more accessible to audiences that expect it as a given? Asking questions from our checklist might send us down paths to even more new areas of possibility. For example, could we create a piece of content that looked at the implications of what would happen if all the lights suddenly went out? What would be the benefits of this happening? The consequences? If all the lights in the world went out simultaneously, what exactly would happen?

Reversal: Another assumption we take for granted about lighting is that for most of us, the cost of lighting is pretty static. Let's try reversing that. What if it was free or what if it was 10 times as expensive? This would lead us to questions about how the cost of lighting effects our habits. Perhaps we could create an interesting piece of content that tried to answer these hypothetical questions.

Exaggeration: Is there a numerical value associated with the topic that you take for granted that could be adjusted up or down? For example, we take for granted the speed of light. What would happen if we changed this number? Alternatively, we take for granted the brightness of our sun, so what would happen if our sun suddenly got brighter or dimmer? What if the number associated with lighting elements themselves changed. For instance, what if light bulbs lasted forever? What if they only lasted a day? Then go back and ask yourself questions from the checklist again and see if anything compelling floats up.

Distortion: Let's try to adjust something we take for granted about lighting. How about the idea that lighting is almost always in the form of lamps or ceiling lighting. What are some other ways we could light a room in an unexpected or innovative way. What if our lighting came in another form; what might that look like?

Wishful Thinking: Try to ask yourself questions like, "Wouldn't it be nice/cool/interesting if…" and list as many of these statements as you can with regards to your topic area. For example, wouldn't it be awesome if there were lights that did more than just light a room? What if lights could be projectors? What if they could display information around a room? What if they could be used as cameras? What if they could be used to improve our health or beam us knowledge? Don't be afraid to be outlandishâ€"it might lead to an amazing idea.

To be sure, these examples are just some of the many techniques that can be used to help you think laterally. I love beginning my ideation sessions by doing a few exercises like the ones I've mentioned above, even if it's on a subject that's different from the one I'll be doing ideation for. It opens my mind and gets me thinking of the possibilities that might exist when I let go of my preconceptions. In my experience, this type of creative thinking is most conducive to coming up with potentially viral ideas. This is because these types of ideas aren't generated in a typical, logical way but are instead created by using unexpected ways of thinking that deviate from the norm.

I would recommend the work of Edward de Bono if you are looking for more ways to improve your lateral thinking skills. Another great way to switch your brain into lateral thinking mode is to simply do some riddles. Try these before you begin your brainstorming session.

Step 4: vetting ideas against a rubric

I usually try to do 2 to 3 ideas for each subtopic/theme area before moving on to ideation vetting. When vetting, I typically like to get feedback from at least 4 people (other than myself) who are familiar with the client, who know the parameters the content needs to meet, and who have a good understanding of the contributing factors of viral content. I ask them to assign a score to each idea based on the following factors:

  1. The idea's adherence to set parameters
  2. The idea's originality
  3. The idea's newsworthiness
  4. The idea's emotional impact (more specifically, does it create surprise and interest)

Step 5: choosing the idea

This is the easiest partâ€"simply take your culled list and let the client choose! If it's left up to you, any of the top 2 to 3 ideas should be perfect candidates. Perhaps decide based on factors unrelated to its potential for success. Consider cost, timelines, ease of execution, and whether or not the content is evergreen.

Check out the second and third tabs of my Rehabs.com ideation to see this part in action.

Conclusions

Great viral content ideas come from a combination of creativity and hard work. By cultivating a mindset that lends itself toward the ability to think laterally, and by following a process of investigation, brainstorming, and careful vetting, you can greatly increase your chances of a viral hit.


Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

"Real Company Shit" with Nothing More than Leftover Timber

Posted: 08 Oct 2013 04:09 AM PDT

Posted by Jon-C

Hi, I'm Jon from WoodworkersUK - as you'll probably guess from the company name, I'm not an SEO by profession; a very small part of my job entails battling to keep the website in the SERPs! I'm actually a Joiner (Carpenter if you're reading this is the US) working in a small family-run business in North Wales; there are only four of us (and a dog named Ted)! So you're probably thinking, a Carpenter writing on YouMoz, WTF?!

The motley crew (the Westie is the brains of the operation)!

We're a good looking bunch, are we not?! :-)

Image credit : Wil Reynolds Mozcon 2013 Slideshare (Slide 154)

I tend to try and follow as many of the top SEO or marketing blogs and sites as possible to aid myself in keeping our website going and I put into practice anything that I can, with mixed results. I love doing website content but find that it doesn't pick up a lot of links naturally ('Build content and they will come?!' Really Mr Cutts?!). Being small, we've a very tight, limited budget for things like this as well, so some of the things I read online are not realistic for us; everything we do is handmade rather than mass produced, so we're not churning hundreds of items out a week, which in turn, does not give us £1000s to play with each week.

To cut to the chase, I stumbled across a Wil Reynolds Mozcon 2012 video on this very site, it was called Real Company Shit (you'll have to scroll down a bit) and got me thinking a bit. In the video, Wil talks about getting construction links from Mommy bloggers and it was the particular bit about 'inspiring the next generation of engineers' (about 7 minutes 20 into the video) that got me thinking 'What could I do that is 'Real Company Shit'? Hmmmmm?'

Lightbulb moment!

Fast forward a couple of days and I'm clearing out our workshops; we tend to accrue a lot of offcuts and timber, which costs us money, so obviously, we don't like to throw it away as we may be able to use it in the future. However, we can only store so much against the walls until the workshops become narrower and narrower...

Whilst sorting through the offcuts, I thought 'Real Company Shit'! As soon as I got home that night, I wrote a blog post offering the timber for free to local schools for their woodworking departments and thought no more of it and clicked publish and shared on Social Media.

Let's get the next generation of woodworkers into working with wood! Schools use timber and suffer from budget problems and the kids are the next generation of Carpenters/Joiners etc.

Now let me get this straight, I never did this with the idea of getting links etc, I honestly wasn't sure what would happen; I wanted to get rid of some timber and help local schools out first and foremost. I thought that at best we'd probably get a few mentions and likes on Facebook and shares on Twitter, if anything else happened then it was a bonus. By the end of the following day, I had a quick check and we'd had about 30-odd likes on Facebook; I know I know this does not sound a great deal to you SEO types, but for us and our niche, I was quite surprised.

The following day I was fielding phone calls from a couple of schools and decided to follow the original blog post with a second, and yep you've guessed it, a load more Facebook likes again. It was at this stage that I decided to add a sign up page to our website for both schools looking for timber and woodworkers with timber to offer to sign up, this way I hoped to reduce the phone calls to us and give people something to link to.

Outreach

By this stage, we'd got a list of schools in five counties all looking for timber and there is no way we can hope to supply all the local schools that have been in touch with us in a short time frame. We decided to try a spot of outreach. We've got a sign up form for other woodworkers so maybe I can get a few mentions online from Trade associations and rather than send emails, we decided to phone people up as it's more personal...

Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes

First off, we got in touch with ITV Wales News (a local TV station covering the whole of Wales). I thought that this would be a complete waste of time but after a quick phone call, they told us it was a lovely quirky story and they would be in touch (blimey!). Lo and behold, they came down within a fortnight to film in our workshops and in Denbigh High School, which was the first school we supplied with timber. You can see what ITV Wales did here. Despite our best attempts, they wouldn't link to us on their website, but a spot of national coverage was amazing!

We also tried writing a few press releases for the local papers, but unfortunately, they were not interested (I shall return to these later)! Also on our radar, was the trade timber websites and magazines; The British Woodworking Federation (BWF) was an easy one to sort out as we are already members, so wanting to help us out, they wrote a news item appealing for others to get involved and they also gave us a mention in their Email newsletter. The BWF actually have a campaign running (entitled 'I made that') to encourage more people to take up Joinery/Woodworking apprenticeships. This helped me as I took up the angle with all the trade organisations that we need to be getting the kids interested in woodwork in school; this would then make them more likely to turn to woodwork later on, if only schools had a steady supply of timber!

We also contacted both TRADA (Timber Research and Development Association) and TTJ (Timber Trades Journal), both thought it was great and both wrote news items for their websites!

All links have so far brought me a steady stream of visitors too.

Reclaim those brand mentions

As I say, the TTJ wrote a news article but unfortunately the article in question was subscriber only, which I thought defeated the point a bit - a quick phone call unlocked this article for all to see. Unfortunately when I did get to read the article they had mentioned the sign up page url but not as a link. Another quick phone call (they were probably getting sick of me by now!) and they made it into a link for us, job done!

Back to the local press

We had no joy with the local press; however, I was put in touch with a local university looking for timber for their art students. After a chat with the person responsible for PR, we were told he could get write an article on their website in the press section, which would then get sent to the local papers. Sure enough, he was as good as his word and not only did we get a mention (and link) from the University website, but we also got mentions in three local papers!

Local mentions

We've also managed to get a spot of publicity by working with Business to Communities, an organisation that encourages responsible business practice by helping out in the community; this can be donations of materials, time etc., anything that may make a difference. Denbigh High School (who featured in the ITV Wales video) also linked to us!

Social media

We've got one sign up page on our website devoted to this and in regards to shares etc, it is by far the most popular; at last count, it's got 66 Facebook likes, 25 Tweets and 2 Google+ (on a side note, does anybody apart from Internet marketers use G+?!). In total, adding together the four posts on our blog as well, we've 268 shares across various networks, Facebook being by far the largest at 205 likes!

People seem to share the sign-up page more as this has the majority of social media action (66 likes on Facebook, 25 Tweets and 2 Google+).

For us this is going viral!

You can find out more on what people have been saying here.

We'll put on the show ourselves

It hasn't all been plain sailing, however. We have tried repeatedly to get the local authorities that are responsible for school budgets involved to lend a hand in publicising what we are trying to do, but we have been met with suspicion and a completely unhelpful attitude (Welsh Assembly Government/Denbighshire County Council/Flintshire County Council). We've a few more ideas of where we can go with this in the future, with a view to getting other woodworkers involved. Most notably, something we're thinking of suggesting is working in partnership with Denbigh High School, as they have been a joy to supply and work with; they are definitely a school that we will continue to supply timber to come hell or high water.

Have you got the wood?

In the unlikely event of you reading this and you are a North Wales (or nearby) woodworker (or know of one who may be interested) with scrap timber to spare, then please get in touch as we're still looking for others to get involved.

As I say, I'm no SEO/Internet Marketer and it was a bit daunting writing this! Thanks for reading and I hope you've enjoyed my YouMoz post!


Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
Publicat de 1 la 09:47

Niciun comentariu:

Trimiteți un comentariu

Abonați-vă la: Postare comentarii (Atom)