The Great Viral Content Experiment Featuring Blake Lively’s SNL Dance

Just over a week ago, I was watching Saturday Night Live and I caught Blake Lively doing a gyrating dance and promptly dozed off on the couch.  I stumbled to bed and awoke the next morning with an idea: I would create viral content intentionally and see if it drove traffic to my blog.  Could it work?

I Google’d around a little and found that nobody that had written about the previous night’s episode had mentioned her booty dance.  I would be the first, so I grabbed a clip from Hulu and dreamt up the most straightforward headline I could think of — Blake Lively’s Booty Dance On SNL (VIDEO).  Within minutes, I was #1 on Google.  But would there be traffic?

At the end us Sunday, traffic to my blog was up ~10x.  The next day traffic rose another 4x.  I was onto something.  Here’s what I learned:

1. I’ve said it before — speed, SEO, and style matter when creating viral content.  Style — I’m amending that to be sexiness … until I think of a better S word (feel free to suggest one).  People share and search out stories that are attractive, fun, and appealing.
2. BuzzFeed matters.  I really like BuzzFeed.  Google sent a bunch of organic traffic to my post, but BuzzFeed sent more.  And their link now outperforms mine on Google because they have better page rank.
3. Use your social networks.  I posted my story to Facebook and had a few clicks.  Would have been nice to see some more sharing, but, to be honest, my circle of friends isn’t really the Blake Lively target demo.
4. Reddit rocked.  Reddit sent the most traffic — all with no points.  I’ve been really happy with Reddit lately — a single Reddit post may be the most valuable action a person can take on your site, but this is something I’m still trying to quantify.

But the most important thing I learned was this — it’s not just pixie dust.  There’s a method to the madness.