engineering virality -- dc week 2012
TRANSCRIPT
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Engineering Virality
Andrew ForrestAudience, Analytics, & Business Manager
Luigi MontanezFounding Engineer
Wednesday, November 7, 2012DC Week 2012
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Founders
Eli Pariser Peter Koechley
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April May June July August September October
Millions of unique visitors
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Not this...
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This.
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Most Popular Content
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Common Threads?
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The Secret FormulaFor Virality
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Clickability = Headlines
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Curiosity Gap• Too vague, don’t want to click.• This is an amazing video!
• Too specific, don’t need to click.• Chimpanzee sniffs own butt,
passes out from doing so.
• Just right, compelled to click.• Adorable chimpanzee does
something rather unexpected.
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Obama Blasts Obama's Evasive Stance On Gay Marriage
Obama Says Same-Sex Marriage Should Be Legal
Now THIS Is Why I VotedFor Barack Obama
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We write 25 headlines
for every piece of content
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25 Headlines• Start strong, then get desperate, get creative• Explore all possible angles• Useful outside of headlines: share text, tweet
text, lede
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Click Package
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Thumbnails
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Shareability
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Why People Share
TheSweetSpot
Relaxation
Anger
Happiness
Sadness
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Share Buttons Are Effective
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Dark Social• URLs shared via email and IM• Over half the traffic to established media sites• Measured by direct traffic to content pages• Provide an easy to copy-and-paste URL
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Building An Audience
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Broadcasting vs. Virality
• In theory, you only need virality.• In practice, you need both.
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Our Broadcast Network
• Facebook page• Email list
• Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest accounts
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Footer Signup
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Engineering A Hit
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Step 1: Content• Impossible to know a piece of content will go
viral.• Find the right qualities to give it the greatest
chance of success.• Strong, positive emotional pull.
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Step 2: Framing
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Step 3: Initial Push
Post to Facebook page and monitor results
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Step 4: Recognize Potential
Real-time traffic + tracking generations of sharing
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Step 5: Push To Other Channels
Email, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.
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Engineering The Site
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Social Networks
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Facebook Share Button
• The “Like” button isn’t effective.• Sharing is a much stronger signal than liking.• Do the extra work and implement a custom
share button using the Facebook Share Dialog API.
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Facebook Share Dialog
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Open Graph API• Learn it. Implement it fully.• Provide title, description, url, & image meta
tags in your HTML.• Double-check your implementation using the
Facebook Debugger.• Full integration increases your viral capability.
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Tweet Button: Intent
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Twitter Cards
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Social Mobile
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Mobile Traffic• 29% of all traffic in April• 31% of all traffic in October• Highly viral content sees a higher percentage
of mobile traffic• The most popular mobile browser: the built-in
browser in the Facebook iOS app
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Mobile From Day One
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Mobile Implementations
• Do nothing• Responsive Design• Mobile website (m.upworthy.com)• Native iOS and Android apps
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Scaling For Spikes
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Aggressive Caching• Static content should always be cached• Don’t need powerful servers• Bypass complicated web frameworks• Use content-delivery networks
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A/B Testing• Use Optimizely to test new features• Approach new features scientifically• Form a hypothesis• Run an experiment with a proper control• Trust only statistically significant results
• Building in-house experiment framework
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Questions?