* What’s Viral ? * Common Elements of Viral Headlines * Differences Across Social Platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) * 8 Ways to Create your Own Viral Headline Source: Steve Rayson of BuzzSumo

1. 8 WAY S TO
W R I T E V I R A L
H E A D L I N E S
( A N D , Y O U W O N ’ T
B E L I E V E # 6 ! )
P a t t i D a l e s s i o
R e i n v e n t I n t e r a c t i v e , I n c .4/16/16

2. ABOUT ME
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• SEM – PPC (Search Engine Marketing – Pay Per Click)
• Conversion Optimization (Make your digital channels drive new business)
Patti Dalessio

5. SAILING

6. AGENDA
1. What’s Viral ?
2. Common Elements of Viral Headlines
3. Differences Across Social Platforms
(Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter)
4. 8 Ways to Create your Own Viral Headline

7. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “GO VIRAL?”

8. MATH IS HARD
Essentially, the average
“distance” between each
person that spreads a
piece of content, from the
creator to each person
that clicks
The formula for “going viral”

9. “BROADCAST” VS. “VIRAL”
Broadcasting:
A message is sent to
people directly - one
source, many
recipients.

10. “BROADCAST” VS. “VIRAL”
Viral:
Messages spread
exponentially, propagating
(spreading) via sharing and
re-sharing from multiple
sources – Like a biological
virus!

11. OTHER PEOPLE NEED TO SHARE
CONTENT FOR IT TO BECOME VIRAL

12. WHAT’S THE
SECRET TO
MAKING A PIECE
OF CONTENT GO
VIRAL?

13. THERE’S NO SECRET
BUT...

14. THERE IS THE HEADLINE

15. LET’S LOOK AT THE DATA:
EXPLORING COMMONALITIES OF VIRAL
HEADLINES

16. STRUCTURE OF A VIRAL HEADLINE
Emotional
Element
Amusing
Surprising
Heart
Warming
Beautiful
Inspiring
Warning
Shocking
Content
Element
Images
Facts
Charts
Quotes
Video
Interaction
Topic
Element
Trending
Topic
Health
Cats & Dogs
Babies
Long Life
Love
Format
Element
List Posts
Quiz
Story
Curated
Research
Report
Promise
Element
How to...
Complete
Guide to...
Practical Tips..
Improve you..

17. 21 Clothing Hacks That Will Save You From Embarrassing Mishaps
Format Promise
Topic
Emotion
Superlative
Content Type

18. H O W D O V I R A L
H E A D L I N E S D I F F E R
A M O N G S O C I A L
P L AT F O R M S ?

19. RESEARCH BY STEVE
Source:
Steve Rayson of BuzzSumo
“Researching the headlines of the most shared
posts in the BuzzSumo database”

20. BUZZSUMO.COM

21. NOTES ABOUT THE RESEARCH
• Extracted trigrams and bigrams from the headlines of 1 million
random articles from top publishers
• Looked at trigrams that are present in at least 150 of the article
headlines
• Sorted them by shares across social networks to identify the top
performing trigrams in terms of social shares
3-word phrase 2-word phrase

22. THE WORDS AND PHRASES
THAT RESONATE WITH PEOPLE
VARY (A LOT) ACROSS SOCIAL
MEDIA PLATFORMS

23. TOP HEADLINE TRIGRAM (3 WORD PHRASES)
SHARED ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER

24. TOP HEADLINE TRIGRAM (3 WORD PHRASES)
SHARED ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER

25. CONTENT ELEMENTS

26. FORMAT ELEMENTS

27. TOPIC ELEMENTS

28. SUPERLATIVE WORDS

29. WORDS/PHRASES

30. TAKE-AWAYS
Two Elements that Perform Best
Across Platforms
List Posts
How To Posts

31. 8 WAYS TO
WRITE A VIRAL
HEADLINE

32. (1) STRUCTURE
Use a viral headline structure with at least three of the key elements
Emotional
Element
Amusing
Surprising
Heart
Warming
Beautiful
Inspiring
Warning
Shocking
Content
Element
Images
Facts
Charts
Quotes
Video
Interaction
Topic
Element
Trending
Topic
Health
Cats &
Dogs
Babies
Long Life
Love
Format
Element
List Posts
Quiz
Story
Curated
Research
Report
Promise
Element
How to...
Complete
Guide to...
Practical
Tips..
Improve
you..

33. (2) FORMAT ELEMENT
Research the formats that work best with
your audiences and use that format in
your headline!

34. (3) CONTENT ELEMENT
Check the content types that resonate
with your audience and include these in
your headline

35. (4) TOPIC ELEMENT
Choose topics that resonate with your
audience.
Research trending topics (tool like BuzzSumo) and leverage these topics, or a
permanently popular topic.
Like:
“Content Marketing: Every Time You Mention Your Product A Kitten Dies”.

36. (5) SUPERLATIVE
OR EMOTIONAL WORDS
Research the emotional words that
resonate with your audience.
The research shows that words like ‘Amazing’ work well on
Facebook whereas ‘Successful’ has more appeal on LinkedIn.
What is important is the words that resonate with your
audience.

37. (6) TRIGRAMS
Research the bigrams and trigrams that work
best in your area/niche and on your social
networks.
NERD ALERT:
A way to do this with BuzzSumo is to search for the most shared of your topic, export the
results, sort by network shares.
e.g. Facebook, copy the headlines of say the top few thousand posts and paste them into a
text analyzer (such as http://www.online-utility.org/text/analyzer.jsp) which will show you
the most popular two and three word phrases. Use the trigrams that work best with your
audience.

38. (7) HAVE A CLEAR PROMISE
What does your headline promise the reader?
Is it explicit what they can expect if they click through to your article. Are you
promising to improve their performance, to reveal a secret, show them
something amazing or surprising or are you promising to unravel a story.

39. (8) TAILOR PROMOTIONAL CONTENT
FOR EACH SOCIAL NETWORK
Draft different content for social posts and ads on the
different networks.
Use the words and phrases that work best on that
network.

40. MORE TIPS FOR VIRAL HEADLINES
• LENGTH: 8 words or less than 70 characters (there’s always exceptions)
• Inject your titles with a high dose of curiosity and back it up with great
content
• Address Readers in 2nd Person
– It’s awkward, but it’s the perfect form for headline writing, grabbing the
attention of readers by calling them out.
– You Think You Know Game of Thrones? Take Our Quiz and Find Out!
– 3 Ice Cream Recipes You’ll Drool Over This Summer
– 5 Emergency Tools You Should Never Leave Home Without

41. CONTACT ME
• Email: PDalessio@ReinventInteractive.com
• Website: ReinventInteractive.com
• @SEOPatti (Twitter & Instagram)
Patti Dalessio