I had a great opportunity to speak at the Foundation Center today as their kick of session for Arts & Humanities month. The room was packed full of people interested in learning more about Social Media. The two main points I hope they walked away with is:

1. Your best assets are hidden, locked away in you heart, mind, and experience and social media is a place where you can set them free through your stories.

2. To go viral, you need to find ways to make your audience part of your show.

“Going Viral” refers to a phenomenon when a message is passed on from peer networks to peer networks until it has received widespread attention and popularity.

Long ago stories went viral when they were passed on from village to village, and from generation to generation. The printing press and the increase in people who were able to read and write enabled more stories and ideas to be spread virally at increasing speeds and with greater reach.

Broadcast television and radio allowed an even greater reach and speed of transmitting messages, and the Internet seems to have broken down all barriers of story telling.

However, the more ways that became available to share a story the more demand was put on people’s attention. For a message to resonate with the target audience it needs to be relevant, entertaining, informative and inspirational. For a message to go viral, it needs a little bit of magic.

Why do you want to reach a wider audience?

All the world is a stage and many people and brands would like to have the leading role. However, before trying to launch a viral campaign, it is best to step back and ask what the return would be of a viral campaign.

Are we trying to get feedback from the community (Crowdsourcing)? Promoting a campaign that encourages feedback from the community is a great way to create a buzz, but the person or organization needs to be prepared to demonstrate that they sincerely are interested and are listening to what the community is saying.

Are we trying to share something newsworthy? If so, why is it newsworthy? What is the story and how does it impact the lives of the people who would spread it throughout their networks? How does the news impact their lives? Is it entertaining or inspiring? Or is it just a promotional pitch?

If it is a promotional pitch again, what is the value for someone to pass the pitch along? Would it help them look like an expert? Will it help them solve a problem for a friend or peer? Does it appeal to their sense of humor or values? Is is simply entertaining?

Just like in ancient days when stories were passed on from village to village and from generation to generation, the story teller had some investment in the story, the story had meaning for the one telling the story and the one receiving the story, today’s messages have to offer something personal to the audience if it is to passed along.

For a message to go viral, it must entertain, educate and inspire.

According to the book Secrets of Social Media Marketing, the kind of creative that is likely to go viral includes;

• Knockout creative that's funny, shocking, intriguing or surprising.
• An idea customers can relate to and care about.
• A clearcut message so people are able to pass it on with one sentence.
• An easy way to pass it on - a link, embedding code, "share this" button, email to a friend, etc.
• A concept that builds relationships with customers by getting them to interact with others.

It is not enough just to get a message passed around, a viral message should serve a purpose, have a measure objective. When creating a viral campaign consider the following;

• What is the campaign's desired outcomes based on current organizational goals and  how  will the success of the campaigned be measured?
• When the campaign goes viral, what are some of the things we can capture and learn about the behaviors of our audience? What are the current assumptions and knowledge about the audience?
• How agile is the campaign? Can it adapt to new findings?
• What is the call to action for the campaign? Is it measurable?

A VERY successful holiday campaign was one that was sponsored by Office Max. More than 123 million “elves” were created in just six weeks.

According to Online Media Daily; The success of "Elf Yourself," created by EVB San Francisco and Toy NY, is in part due to three fundamentals, according to a spokesperson for the agencies:

1)Keep it simple,

2) Make it personal and

3) Give people a reason to pass it on.