Forget Facebook: 6 Better Social Networks to Make Your Content Go Viral

There is no denying that Facebook has been the top dog in the social media world, over the last years. The popular social media site has experienced an enormous growth curve from just 100,000 monthly active users in 2008 to close to 1.5 billion users in the first quarter of 2015!

While some marketers have been able to leverage the popularity of Facebook to share content with thousands and even millions of users, the organic reach for page posts on Facebook is now as low as 2.2%. It is becoming more difficult to get the visibility you want for your content, unless you pay for it.

With low organic reach, fewer people are seeing your posts on Facebook, making it harder to execute a viral marketing campaign on this platform. The good news is, there are plenty of other social platforms with the potential to make your content go viral.

Here is a list of the sites you should be looking at to get massive visibility for your content:

YouTube

YouTube is the world’s largest video sharing platform with more than 1 billion users. Each day, users all over the world view hundreds of millions of hours of videos.

Without a doubt, it takes more than creating a video and posting it on YouTube to go viral.  But, with very strategic planning e.g. partnering with excellent influencers, choosing the right YouTube category to post your videos and creating a post launch plan for your content, it is possible to leverage the immense popularity of YouTube and online video.

Periscope

Periscope is the new, shiny social site and you do not want to miss out on the potential virility of this live video-streaming platform. The Periscope app combines the popularity of video and mobile to deliver live video streaming services that let you share videos with followers in real time.

The great thing about new social sites is that you are able to grow your organic audience fast regardless of the number of followers you have on Facebook or other platforms.

So what can you do with Periscope? A lot—you could share videos of work in progress, do a product tease, share a  how-to video in real time, share behind-the scenes footage, or humorous videos to break the monotony. The live video-streaming nature of this app offers a real possibility for your videos to go viral in real-time.

Instagram

Instagram, a mobile photo-sharing network is one of the fastest growing social platforms, with an estimated 300 million monthly active users. Just like Periscope, Instagram offers the potent combination of mobile and images, providing a great opportunity to get creative and develop content that engages your audience.

Millenials make up the majority of Instagram users and they spend hours on the platform looking for inspiring, compelling and engaging images that they can share with their own followers.

What type of content goes viral on Instagram? Funny photos, celebrity photos, images of food, colorful textures, fashion as well as dynamic photos such as those taken at a concert or party. Do not limit yourself to just these types of photos; understand what your target audience resonates with and give it to them consistently.

Reddit

Although Reddit was launched in 2005, it still does not receive as much attention as Facebook does or other social sites. However, this online bulletin board and social networking site offers marketers massive opportunities to make their content viral.

Reddit attracts an estimated 169 million monthly active users. The community here is very savvy but skeptical, requiring that you be careful with the way you promote your content.

Perhaps the greatest advantage of Reddit is its niche categories or subreddits, which allow you to share your content with the most relevant audience. Videos, humor, infographics and interviews are the most well-received content on the site.

Vine

Vine is a small, nifty app that takes viral video marketing to the next level. This app lets you create short, six-second looping videos and share them on Twitter. An estimated 1.5 billion Vine loops are played each day!

Users love Vine because of the dynamic (and often humorous) nature of a short video that plays continuously. These videos are extremely shareable across millions of users, making it possible for interesting videos to go viral fast.

Tumblr

Tumblr is quite different from Facebook, Twitter and other social networks that primarily emphasize visual content. The site attracts about 420 million active users each month and hosts an estimated 217 million blogs. What is really unique about Tumblr is that it allows marketers to be in control of how they create and present their blog content.

As a micro-blogging social network, going viral on Tumblr depends on how frequently and extensively other users repost your blog posts. As such, to succeed on Tumblr, it is important that your posts be original, engaging and shareable. Tumblr users are savvy, very niche-oriented and actively share valuable information with their networks.

The Death of Facebook?

There is no doubt that Facebook is still the most popular social networking site. However, there is a plethora of under-explored and less-saturated platforms that offer immense opportunities to build a community of followers who will continuously engage with your content.