9 tips for making your content go viral from gawker's most successful writer
TRANSCRIPT
Your Content Go Viral From Gawker's Most Successful Writer
9 Tips for Making
This guy is the greatest viral content genius on the planet.
For the past two years he has worked at Gawker, one of the world’s biggest blog networks.
Neetzan Zimmerman Say hello to …
Zimmerman is obsessed with finding viral content that has historically generated
huge numbers of traffic for Gawker.
He’s very, very good at this.
Zimmerman is obsessed with finding viral content that has historically generated
huge numbers of traffic for Gawker.
How good?
Of the top 10 posts on Gawker in 2013, 9 were by Zimmerman.
In November, his posts drew 17 million unique visitors for Gawker.
In November, his posts drew 17 million unique visitors for Gawker.
That’s more than 80% of the site’s total visitors.
It’s more than all of Gawker’s other writers combined.
So how does he do it?
So how does he do it? We asked him to share his secrets …
1) Put in the hours • Zimmerman works 12 hours a day,
from 7 a.m. To 7 p.m. • Finding viral content is not his job,
it’s his obsession.
“It’s good old-fashioned elbow grease. That’s the key to success in
this business.”
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2) Cast a Wide Net • Zimmerman monitors a database of about
1,000 websites every day, though he's constantly adding new sites and dropping old ones from the list.
• Every morning he scans roughly 500 posts to find the golden pieces of content.
“I can tell just by reading the title or a short description
whether a video is going to be worth my time. Sometimes I don’t even watch the video
before posting.”
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3) Aspire to Inspire • Human interest stories and stories that inspire
people “are the bread and butter of the viral internet,” Zimmerman says.
4) Play the Percentages • Zimmerman posts 10-15 items a day.
Most don’t go viral.
“I don’t post anything unless I have 100% trust that it will be a success. But it’s a fairly regular occurrence that I put my trust in
something and it ends up not fulfilling my hope.”
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5) Study the Data • At the end of every day Zimmerman reviews
his posts and studies the traffic data, trying to figure out why each post did or didn’t work, and how it might have been improved.
“‘Why didn’t this work? Was the headline too
wordy?’ There is a lot to be gained when a post
doesn’t do well.”
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6) Think About Timing • There are two golden time slots where posts
perform best: 9 a.m. and noon, EST. • At 9, East Coast workers are arriving at the
office and don’t want to start work right away. At noon the same thing happens on the West Coast, and the East Coasters are breaking for lunch.
7) Package It Well • It’s not just about finding great stories. You
also need to choose a compelling angle and write a great headline.
“If something can be sensationalized in a certain
way to provoke a certain feeling in the reader that
tends to do the best.”
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8) Be Social • Things go viral when they take off on social
networks and people start sharing them.
• Gawker promotes posts on its own Facebook and Twitter accounts, but Zimmerman doesn’t promote his posts on his own social profiles.
“Getting on Reddit’s front page is still the best way to inject a post with a burst of
traffic that, while short-lived, could be of epic proportions.”
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9) Be Patient • Some posts don’t take off right away, but then
months later they will suddenly bubble up on a social network and go crazy. Other posts just build traffic slowly.
• Zimmerman’s biggest post last year was
about a reality TV star who made a sex tape. The post drew 11 million views, but did so over the course of seven months.
“At any given moment there were 200 people looking at that
post. This went on for months. When I write a post I ask myself, ‘Will this
keep going around on Facebook and Twitter for months?’ My focus is
on playing that long game.”
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Finally …
“A lot of people have called me up and asked me, ‘What’s
the secret?’ The good news is that it’s so much easier than people
make it out to be. I don’t feel special in any way.”
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For more content tips, click here:
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