How to go viral?

The title of this post may be a bit misleading. It is not a lesson on winning the viral lottery. This is a curious plea for answers. I was surfing Facebook this morning and I came upon several videos that caught my attention causing me to pause and click. Two were funny animal posts (which I love), two were posts of people doing dumb things, and one was of a car accident (morbid sense of curiosity).

When I looked down at the number of shares for these videos I was astounded. The average was five million views, with one dog-baby video currently at more than thirteen million. What sets these videos apart among the thousand per second that are being uploaded every single minute of the day? Why do these videos soar across the internet while other more fascinating, funny, or intriguing videos disappear into the insatiable cyber universe? How does something go viral? What is the secret? Why this post and not that post? Why? Why? Why?

Over the years that I’ve maintained my blog I’ve had a few posts go “somewhat viral”. One post even received more than 100,000 hits, if you combine Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and several other social media sites. But millions and millions of views just on Facebook? How is it achieved?

Monetary benefit is not important to me at this stage of the novel writing game, it’s exposure that’s priceless. Eleven of my books are published on Amazon and a viral post could catapult my career. Going viral opens doors otherwise securely locked against success. Ask Rebecca Black, her critically and brutally trashed song ‘Friday’ went viral with more than 97,000,000 views, earning her well over a million dollars selling advertising on the page.

So how do you do it? How do you create the diamond post that changes your destiny forever and shines amongst the vast sands of the internet?

I wish I could tell you.