You Don't Have To Be Lady Gaga To Go Viral: 3 Ways To Distinguish Your Website

Most people think the key to going viral has something to do with the content of their posts, and while it does, they tend to ignore that one of the key elements to going viral is being memorable. If your latest post, your site or the image on your post isn't something unexpected or new, nobody's going to share it. I thought I'd use this principal to try something very different. One surprising way to possibly go viral and set yourself apart is to modify your 'about us' page or maybe change your '404 page' to be something viral. The fail-whale isn't an accident. See below for some of my tips to go viral through unexpectedness. If you read my post on stickiness, you can see that a solid website is concrete and simple. Once you've got a solid base, you need to imbue your site with special features like emotion and unexpectedness. Take a look below for some examples. Make a Funny/Strange/Bizarre/Insightful About Us Page Not many websites spend much time on their 'About us' page. Your 'about us' page can be something where you post something that will make your readers/the general public feel something. Most 'about us' pages are produce a me-too feeling and have nothing original to them. With a good 'about us' page, you can potentially get viral on social bookmarking/media sites like Digg/StumbleUpon/Facebook. To get started, the only thing you must avoid is people getting that 'me too' feeling. To help you get started, here are some ideas: Make your 'about us' page like a comic where someone asks what your site is about and the other person answers in funny ways Make a surprising introduction Use Funny/Strange/Bizarre/Insightful Anecdotes and Wording Iff you're a language school, for example, you can cite funny quotes your students have said in the classes (with hiding the names, of course :) Another thing to take advantage of is the 'subscribe button'. Many websites have that me-too 'subscribe via Facebook, Twitter, etc' types of buttons. To get some attention from visitors, have you ever considered changing the 'subscribe button' to something like "Show your friends why we rule, follow us on Facebook" type of messages? Again, adding some emotion is helpful here. Some examples: "[number of people following you on Facebook'] people think we're cool. Do you like us too?" (this can potentially work very well on Facebook with the Like button, I've seen so many sites just instruct readers to 'like them' without putting the 'like' word into any context). "We love our [number of Twitter followers] followers. Wanna feel the love? Follow us" All I'm trying to do here is to avoid the 'me too' feeling when writing these messages. Another good way to get (positive) attention is to invent your own topic! Cracked.com has a "Craption" section on the top of their website: Now, depending on your website topic, you'll have to put some work in order to come up with something like this. If you own a website on learning Spanish, for example, you can combine some Spanish and English word and get something original that shows what your site is about. Why do this anyway? Just for the attention? There are people who probably come to your website but are not really interesting in anything particular you offer. So if they see the 'sticky part' of your website, they might just click out of curiosity, wanting to be entertained. If they like what they see they might re-tweet/like on Facebook what they've just seen. Make a Funny/Strange/Bizarre/Insightful 404 Page There are a lot of posts on funny 404 pages. Want to get yourself included in them? Go and make your 404 page stand out. You can then submit a picture on digg 'best 404 page ever' or email webmasters asking if they would be interested in adding your 404 page to their list. Make sure the websites URL is in the picture, though! If you have any other ideas, let me know in the comments below. credits for the thumbnail picture: IFC.com Darko is the editor of FinderMind.com. His latest article explores various free people search websites for finding people online.

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You Don't Have To Be Lady Gaga To Go Viral: 3 Ways To Distinguish Your Website

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