After many failed attempts at earning a top spot on the popular viral website, BuzzFeed.com, I finally feel confident in my ability and the science behind a viral posting. While it’s tough to say exactly what makes a post disseminate rapidly, I do understand some of the basics and wish to share them with you today:

1. Watch Internet Trends
If you are on Twitter, that is a good place to start. Facebook is also a great place to notice trending posts and information. However, search around for some blogs that are relevant to this category. Occasionally I browse The Daily What and I Am Bored for relevantly potential trending posts.

2. Watch Your Personal Feeds And Emails
Some of the greatest posts I have dreamed up came through one of those chain emails that we all love to hate. A lot have come through friends on Facebook and Twitter. It’s just knowing which content people are going to latch on to and spread through their networks. Take this post for example, Creativity In Advertisement, I received this from my sister through a forwarded email and knew people on the internet would be very excited about the content.

3. Network With Others
It’s still very important for you to build a network and real connections with people on Twitter or Facebook, or even the sites you are posting your content to. I have a connection now on BuzzFeed’s staff and am happy to be interfacing with someone. This helps add a personal touch to anything I decide to do on the site.

4. Be Timely
The internet has peak hours. I know that 11 AM is around the best time for me to be posting content. This seems true as well for Twitter activity among many other spots on the web. Keep this in mind when posting something that you hope to bring to a viral status.

5. Craft A Clever Title
Everyone knows that the title or subject of any message is why we initially are interested. Think about the information you are posting and develop a catchy and/or clever title message for your post. It usually helps your cause to involves numbers somewhere within your title. For whatever reason people are very interested in lists. Check out a couple posts I created that did really well with these few tips in mind: 10 Awful Obama Tattoos and 14 Unusual and Creative Slippers.

6. Spend Some Time On A Description
Second to the title as far as why people click on a post and are interested further is the description. The title was clever and caught my eye but did the description really draw me in? This should be witty and show a bit of your personality. Check out this post: Real Life Composition.

7. Include A Video Or Pictures
It’s a pretty good rule of thumb that information is viral because there is generally a video or picture attached to it. This is pretty standard and if you don’t have one of the two you more than likely wont be going viral.

8. Give It Time
These things take time and it very well might not be until you build a personal connection that your content ends up going viral.

9. Diversify
Make sure you are spreading information that is unique to the networks you are posting and unique to your personal brand. Diversify the networks you utilize as well. StumbleUpon and Reddit are good place to start, as well as Digg.

These are all good tips for getting you started with viral content on the internet. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments, I’d love to help you out!