Going Viral Math for Publishers

The concept of going viral has become a contemporary cultural phenomenon but there are a few things you should know about how and why things go viral - or don't.

First, going viral literally harkens back to epidemics which spread from person to person. Ironically, it's taken on a positive meaning more recently. As a content publisher today, we have multiple channels to maximize the Seed within our viral "diffusion model" which is effectively a measure of digital word of mouth spread.

With all of our social tools it's much easier to share content and thus achieve more reach but going viral is still hard. But even if your content fails to actually go viral the extra reach that results from sharing can be substantial especially with a large initial audience - initial seed.

Let's look at some viral math

Let's imagine you have a funny picture you post to Facebook and 1000 people see it initially, your seed size is 1000 people. If the viral coefficient is .8 that means for each person who sees it they'll share it and .8 more people will see it. As you can see from the table below there are multiple generations of content reach (I've rounded off at the end to conserve space).

Seed

Reach

Second Gen3rd4th5th6th7th8th9th10th11thTotal Reach10008006405124093272622091671341074270

A viral of coefficient of .8 is pretty good and you can see you'll get more than 4x the reach thanks to sharing than the initial seed. Now let's see what happens when we make the coefficient .2 (more common) or 1.75 (much more rare - actual viral growth!).

Viral Coefficient of .2

Seed

Reach

Second Gen3rd4th5thTotal Reach100020040811249

You can see nearly 25% more people were reached but not nearly the same effect as above. This is far more common and indicates the importance of maximizing the size of your initial Seed.

Viral Coefficient of 1.75

Seed

Reach

Second Gen3rd4th5th6th7th8thTotal Reach10001750306253599378164132872250262115,946

Now you can see the incredible power of what happens when each person reads something shares it with fewer than 2 other people. This is powerful but very hard to accomplish and indicate the importance of quality content that is engaging, relevant and well-timed. This is also why we love Social Promotions, they're a great way to incentivize and encourage sharing to maximize reach for you and the sponsors.

Key Takeaway

The more you can increase your initial seed the better - pretty obvious right? It's still true with the dearth of social media tools because most messages run out of speed so when you can distribute it across multiple channels you maximize your viral reach. Use your website, Facebook page, Email list and other social tools to kick off a new message.

Second, content virality matters most. Don't fall prey to the quantity over quality argument, especially on Facebook. Post or share content that is relevant and you give yourself the best chance of getting your viral coefficient above 1 and that's where the magic happens.