A lot of people who create viral content – such as a video – put a lot of thought and effort into creating something polished, professional, and share-worthy. But then when it comes to the title or description of the content they write a few lines that are as boring and dry as burnt toast.

Often times, I fall into that category. Just sayin'.

Here’s the deal:

If you want to kick start a big viral effect, your title and description (where applicable) need to get attention and get the click. And one good way to do that is by arousing curiosity.

The idea here is to create an “itch” that your visitors can only scratch by viewing your content. You arouse their curiosity with a title, and then satisfy that curiosity within the viral content itself.

If you want a crash course in curiosity-arousing titles, all you have to do is visit one of the many content-curation sites that specialize in sharing viral content. One really good example of this is the popular site UpWorthy.com.

You can find plenty of curiosity-arousing titles on UpWorthy. Here’s a quick sample:

• “17 assumptions modern newlyweds are sick of people making about their marriages.”

The target market is going to immediately be curious about what what these assumptions are and the only way they can find out is to view the post.

• “Dante and David apply for the same job but only one gets an interview. Here's the rest of their day.”

This is going to raise questions that can only be answered by watching the video. I'm sure you can imagine why, but can you imagine all the areas where racism rears its ugly head and oppresses people of color to this very day?

• “If rigging elections were legal, this is how it'd look. Because it's exactly how they do it.”

This title certainly arouses curiosity about how “they” rig elections. Do you want to know how? I sure do. (I bet it involves MONEY.)

[tweetthis url=”http://goo.gl/DihWai”]Your viral content needs to have a good title if you want people to view the content. [/tweetthis]

At that point, the content itself should include the other factors we’ve talked about in order to get people sharing it across your market.

Now let’s wrap things up:

Creating Your Own Secret Sauce

As you know, creating viral content isn’t 100% science. If it was, then big companies around the world wouldn’t pour so much time, effort, and money into campaigns that flopped. There is always that factor that no one foresees that either makes or breaks a campaign.

Unfortunately, there aren’t any crystal balls that can give you a sneak peek into the future of your viral campaign. But what you can do is use the ten factors you just learned about in this report.

Let’s recap:

Factor 1: Accessibility

Factor 2: Share-ability

Factor 3: Consume-ability

Factor 4: Novelty

Factor 5: Arouses Emotion

Factor 6: Enjoy-ability

Factor 7: Ego

Factor 8: Relate-ability

Factor 9: Connect-ability

Factor 10: Arouses Curiosity

The key here isn’t to just pick a factor and focus all your time and effort on being sure your viral campaign nails that factor. Instead, you want to include as many of those factors as possible. Ideally, your content should be nailing all ten of those factors.

Think about the last big viral video that rolled across your Facebook feed for several. I’m betting it included all of these factors – or at least the vast majority. Am I right?

Let’s take the example I gave you earlier in this report, about the guy who grabbed the pelican by the foot and then ended up pulling fishing hooks and lines off its beak.

It was easy to share, access, and consume (because it was a short three minute video on Facebook). Those are the first three factors.

Factor 4: It was novel to me because I had never seen anyone catch a pelican like that before.

Did it arouse emotion? You bet it did. First outrage, then surprise when I realized the video was about helping rather than hurting an animal, then happiness. For these reasons it was also thoroughly enjoyable.

Factor 7, ego. Yes, I shared it. And yes, it probably made me look good to my friends when I shared this heart-warming video. This also created a connection with my friends (Factor 9).

The video also hit Factor 8, in that I could relate to it. No, I can’t exactly relate to capturing a pelican, but I certainly can relate to helping those who can’t help themselves. And I'm a sucker for injured or lost animals.

And finally curiosity – it had that too. The title was something along the lines of, “This man catches a pelican – you won’t believe that happens next.”

Even a simple video like the pelican video nails all ten of those factors. Your viral content simply won’t get much traction if you don’t inject all of those factors.

So here’s what I suggest you do next:

Start brainstorming viral content for your niche. Study your market first if you don’t know much about them. Then go to sites like YouTube, Facebook and others to see what sort of content is already trending in your niche. Don't forget places like UpWorthy.

• Does your market like infographics, videos, memes, or other content?
• Do they like humorous content, motivational, inspirational, or something else?
• What topics seem to grab their attention the most?

Reverse engineer the viral content that’s currently working in your niche to see if you can figure out what your prospects respond to and then create something with similar factors.

NOTE: Don’t create similar content, as that destroys the novelty factor. Instead, create content that hits the same factors and triggers as the popular content in your niche.

One last tip:

Be sure to kick start your viral content. This means you put it in front of as many people as possible on the day you launch it, as this will help it gather the momentum and critical mass it needs to go viral in a big way.

Good luck – and here’s to seeing your content on the front page of YouTube or trending on social media soon!