Engineering Virality -- DC Week 2012
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This document summarizes strategies for engineering content to go viral online. It discusses focusing content on strong emotions, framing content effectively, doing an initial push on social networks like Facebook to test engagement, recognizing content with viral potential, and pushing that content to other channels. It also discusses optimizing websites for sharing and mobile, such as using share buttons, social media integration, responsive design, and scaling infrastructure to handle traffic spikes. Testing new features through A/B testing is also recommended.
Engineering Virality -- DC Week 2012
- 1. Engineering Virality Andrew Forrest Audience, Analytics, & Business Manager Luigi Montanez Founding Engineer Wednesday, November 7, 2012 DC Week 2012
- 4. Founders Eli Pariser Peter Koechley
- 5. Millions of unique visitors 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 April May June July August September October
- 7. Not this...
- 8. This.
- 16. Common Threads?
- 17. The Secret Formula For Virality
- 18. Clickability = Headlines
- 19. Curiosity Gap • Too vague, don’t want to click. • This is an amazing video! • Too specific, don’t need to click. • Chimpanzee sniffs own butt, passes out from doing so. • Just right, compelled to click. • Adorable chimpanzee does something rather unexpected.
- 20. Obama Blasts Obama's Evasive Stance On Gay Marriage Obama Says Same-Sex Marriage Should Be Legal Now THIS Is Why I Voted For Barack Obama
- 21. We write 25 headlines for every piece of content
- 22. 25 Headlines • Start strong, then get desperate, get creative • Explore all possible angles • Useful outside of headlines: share text, tweet text, lede
- 23. Click Package
- 24. Thumbnails
- 25. Shareability
- 26. Why People Share Anger The Sweet Spot Relaxation Happiness Sadness
- 29. Share Buttons Are Effective
- 30. Dark Social • URLs shared via email and IM • Over half the traffic to established media sites • Measured by direct traffic to content pages • Provide an easy to copy-and-paste URL
- 32. Broadcasting vs. Virality • In theory, you only need virality. • In practice, you need both.
- 33. Our Broadcast Network • Facebook page • Email list • Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest accounts
- 36. Footer Signup
- 40. Step 1: Content • Impossible to know a piece of content will go viral. • Find the right qualities to give it the greatest chance of success. • Strong, positive emotional pull.
- 42. Step 2: Framing
- 44. Step 3: Initial Push Post to Facebook page and monitor results
- 45. Step 4: Recognize Potential Real-time traffic + tracking generations of sharing
- 46. Step 5: Push To Other Channels Email, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.
- 48. Social Networks
- 50. Facebook Share Button • The “Like” button isn’t effective. • Sharing is a much stronger signal than liking. • Do the extra work and implement a custom share button using the Facebook Share Dialog API.
- 52. Open Graph API • Learn it. Implement it fully. • Provide title, description, url, & image meta tags in your HTML. • Double-check your implementation using the Facebook Debugger. • Full integration increases your viral capability.
- 54. Twitter Cards
- 55. Social Mobile
- 56. Mobile Traffic • 29% of all traffic in April • 31% of all traffic in October • Highly viral content sees a higher percentage of mobile traffic • The most popular mobile browser: the built-in browser in the Facebook iOS app
- 57. Mobile From Day One
- 58. Mobile Implementations • Do nothing • Responsive Design • Mobile website (m.upworthy.com) • Native iOS and Android apps
- 60. Aggressive Caching • Static content should always be cached • Don’t need powerful servers • Bypass complicated web frameworks • Use content-delivery networks
- 61. A/B Testing • Use Optimizely to test new features • Approach new features scientifically • Form a hypothesis • Run an experiment with a proper control • Trust only statistically significant results • Building in-house experiment framework
- 63. Questions?