[ALERT] Breaking Story That Will Go Viral…

Video Source: How To Spread a Rumor | Communication | Howcast.com

Basic Needs:

• Juicy Story
• Testable credential
• Gullible person
• Repetition
• Fear-mongering (optional)

Steps:

1. Keep It Simple
2. Include a vivid detail that is easy to envision
3. Make sure story is difficult to disprove
4. Make it shocking but believable
5. Give one detail that can be proven, even if it may not prove the story, to give credibility to story
6. Tell people gullible enough to believe and who are quick to spread juicy rumors
7. Keep story alive by repeating often

Tips:

• Don’t be mean. Rumors can destroy people and companies, if used in a destructive manner.
• A rumor that preys on a specific fear is more likely to be passed on.

The actual video highlights how to do this for personal gain in the workplace. But there is value in the techniques for marketing purposes…

Everyone wants to be the author of the next Viral Video, Viral Picture or Viral Story… Because anything that goes viral has the potential to drive a lot of traffic to our websites….

Not all of us have the ability to create a funny video or enough good luck to create video that the world falls in love with…

So we must use the tools available to us — our gift for story telling.

One of the examples I found truly inspirational was the story about how Facebook was shutting down on March 15th, 2011…

Story here: Facebook Shutting Down Rumor Goes Viral: Site Said To Be Ending March 15, 2011 (UPDATE)

27,000 people shared that story on Facebook, and 2,000 people tweeted the story. The story originated on the satirical Weekly World News website.

The story got so much traction that CNN and ABC commented on it, and FaceBook management felt the need to respond, so they tweeted about it.

I had some success in December 2010 with a joke thread about Google’s Original Content Penalty that had the potential of going viral, but never did. The thread actually had some negative blow-back on me in fact, because it angered a lot of Warriors.

Some of those Warriors who were angered by that thread will never again believe me capable of offering anything valuable to the Warrior Forum or the online marketing community.

As I talk about the art of creating rumors, I am drawn again and again to the one point of fact shared in the above video:

This is a tool, that if used well, we can use to promote our websites online…

We want a world a traffic to our websites, but we must always be careful not to create negative blow-back when we attempt to ignite the fuse of rumors to promote our websites…

As frequently said in the 1970′s TV series, “Hill Street Blues“:

If you know of any other examples of viral rumors, please share them here…

1 Comment

• 
  ZooKeeper April 22, 2011 at 10:02 am

  Well, how about the alien video from Russia?

  The original video has been seen nearly 5.5 million times. It was later revealed to be a fake when a local editor thought the “alien” looked like an infant’s body and reported it to police. The perpetrators of the video hoax explained to police the “alien” was just chicken skin filled with bread and painted in “alien colors”.

  Here’s a link to the same video, but with the expose info in the description:

  It really was a pretty good fake, though…

  -Anita

  Log in to Reply