# 12 Principles of Viral Content – Nadya Khoja – MicroConf Growth 2018

Channel: Rob Walling
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga0jxOXFItE
Duration: 41 min
Language: English
Words: 7510
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/Ga0jxOXFItE

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[0:14] Um, so my name is Nadya Khoja and as Rob said, I head marketing at a company called Venngage and we're an infographic software. And our goal is to make design and data more accessible and more engaging for everybody. Um, oh, you can really hear me breathe. I just want you guys to know that I'm

[0:33] still here. Um, so like I said, our mission is to make design and data accessible for everyone. Um, and over my past few years at Venngage, um, when I joined, we were doing about 8,000 MRR at the time. Um, and in the past 3 years we've managed to grow that up to about 350k MRR. Um, and we've only had one channel that we've really focused on. I was given no budget when I started at Venngage. I was simply given one instruction which was

[1:02] to get links. Um, and I'll tell you a bit about my background soon, but uh, over time what we did is we we really focused on organic traffic and content marketing as our focused channel. Um, and in that time we've developed this framework where these 12 principles that we use to guide a lot of the content that we put together. So I'll share those principles with you and I will be going relatively quickly. The format is I'll tell you what the principle is. I'll show you an example and then I'll repeat the principle back

[1:32] to you. Uh, pretty straightforward, but if you guys have any questions, my Twitter handle is there. Feel free to tweet at me. Um, or you can find me after this. But first, a little bit of background about myself. Um, so I actually don't have an education in business or marketing. Um, I actually have a theater degree, specifically in a program called devised theater. Now, my program's main focus was to build productions from the ground up, and we weren't given a script or a general concept to work with. We were simply told to make a show and tell a

[2:07] great story. Um so, for many of you who are the founders or the entrepreneurs at your businesses, and you're probably the sole content creators and the sole marketers, um you might understand that sometimes having a little bit too much creative freedom can actually be quite stunting. So, part of the process that my team and I used uh when we were in in this theater program, was our brainstorming sessions were not about what we were allowed to do, but rather about what we

[2:34] were not allowed to do. And it's by setting these limitations for ourselves that we were actually able to come up with more um creative, more engaging, and more viral concepts overall. So, before we get into the real meat of all these principles, um let me talk to you a little bit about what viral means. So, the concept of viral is uh it what it means is it's content that is circulated rapidly and widely from one web user to another. So, in other words, what you're trying to do is you're trying to create this content that's purpose is to circulate um across social networks and

[3:10] essentially spread like a virus. I'm just going to adjust this a bit. Is that better? Can you guys still hear me? Okay. There we go. Um so, like I said, content that's goal is to circulate across the web like a virus. Now, the problem that a lot of people face is that what we do is we tend to rush into the topic selection process, right? Um and typically what we do is we try to approach uh the type of content that has the most clickbait title. Um and we'll typically throw a few ideas into a spreadsheet and hopefully use that as um this list that will generate

[3:45] content ideas that will last us the entire quarter or the entire year. And although this might seem like the most productive process, it really isn't. If your goal is to create content quantity rather than content quality, then sure this process might work for you. But if your goal is to really create highly engaging content that excites and engages and acquires more users, then it's time to start re-envisioning that process a little bit. And unfortunately, a lot of people do think that acquisition is about creating a lot of content, but it

[4:17] doesn't really work that way. So what is the solution, you might be asking? Well, let me tell you. How do you create content that sticks in your audience's mind? Um so I actually Googled the phrase how to create quality content that stands out. This was the Google suggested query. And I was curious to see what was ranking on the subject and what people had to say. And one of the top-ranking articles when I clicked into it said to create engaging and thought-provoking content. And I thought, well gee, thanks for such a great suggestion. This is exactly what

[4:49] I'm trying to do. The author's following points were to leave your audience with questions, provide a promising and thought-provoking introduction, and tell a great story. And although this provides a good summary of what's needed, the article really failed to address a very important question, which is how do I create engaging and thought-provoking content? How do you leave your readers with questions? How do you write a promising and important introduction? And how do you tell a compelling story? And the truth is it's hard, right? There's a shitload of competition out there and having to constantly produce engaging and thought-provoking content is not

[5:25] easy. But it's easier if you have the right process for creating this content. So that's my goal for today is to share with you these 12 framing principles that myself and my team have used to scale up our content and we've gone from acquiring about 400 users a day to 5,000 a day in the span of a few years. Like I

[5:45] said, we had no budget. So, the first principle that we started using was to solve a burning problem. And what this requires you to do is to really put yourself in your audience's shoes and ask yourself what types of problems they're facing. And if you don't know what types of problems your audience are facing, you can actually ask them by serving them and emailing emailing them and reaching out to them. Even if you only have 10 users, even if you only have 40 users, um these are the people that are already highly engaged and you can find out what struggles they're they're facing right

[6:21] now. Then the next step is to actually discover stories from those answers and use that to fuel the type of content you're creating. Um now, how many of you guys are familiar with inbound.org? It's a marketing site. So, a few of you. Um it's actually I think growth.org now. Oh, big changes on the horizon for inbound. Um but the point is, why are AMAs, um which is actually a popular form of content, um why are AMAs so popular on inbound and Reddit? Um and and the truth is that it gives the average person an opportunity to ask successful people what's been working for them. And essentially, these questions are what

[7:00] will fuel their own success later on. Why do data-driven perform so well organically online? And it's because you're providing new answers to questions that everybody has on their mind. So, the Content Marketing Institute uh is this marketing site. Uh they produce a lot of content. As it's in the name. And every year, they produce this one report on the content marketing benchmarks, budgets, and trends. And a couple of years ago, this report that they put out was actually linked to over 7,000 times. Now, if you're somebody who understands SEO, you might understand that you need links in order to help your content to rank. And you might also

[7:40] realize that it's actually difficult to get links organically and naturally. So, the fact that these guys managed to generate over 7,000 links to one piece of content is quite impressive, especially since a lot of those links were coming from sites like Forbes, Entrepreneur, HubSpot, Moz, and a lot of very high domain sites. So, why were so many people rank linking to the site or linking to this piece of content? And it's because they answered a question that literally every marketer had on their mind, which was how does my content compare to the industry standards? Uh so, this is an

[8:13] example of solving a burning problem. Now, your goal as a business owner is to tap into some of the data that you have um that might provide answers to your audience and solve some of these problems that they're um that they've got or any of these questions that they're thinking about and present that data to them in a way that might be engaging for them and might inspire

[8:34] something within them. So, the next principle um is to find hacks to common struggles. Um is anyone familiar with this book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up? Yeah, I bought this book. I thought just buying it would make my house cleaner. I ended up hiring a cleaner, though. I was too lazy. I read half of it. Um but the point is this book is very well

[8:59] known because it it did go viral. Um and the book actually provides a new approach to house cleaning, right? The goal is still essentially to declutter your home and live as more of a minimalist. Um so, what makes this book different from every other book on house cleaning or every other guide on house

[9:15] cleaning? Well, it's because the solution is framed as a magical solution rather than something you actually have to work hard towards achieving, which is a trap I clearly fell into purchasing this book. And part of the reason is because the simple question that most people remember from this book is does this thing spark joy? Now, the author Marie Kondo states that if the answer to that question is yes, uh um or the sorry, if the answer to that question is no, then you should get rid of the object. Now, most books or guides that you find on house cleaning will typically tell you to get rid of

[9:49] something if you haven't used it in the past 6 months. Uh but Marie Kondo has actually repositioned this question as something a little bit deeper than utility. Joy, right? Um if we have to think back on the past 6 months to whether or not we've used something, and let's say we have 30 outfits, then you know, we're going through our list of clothes, and it's just like, okay, well, this one reminds me of a traumatic experience. I don't want to deal with this outfit anymore. And by the third outfit, you're like, I'm I can't do this anymore. And next thing you know, you've got 60 new outfits uh that you can't get

[10:18] rid of, and there's no space in your closet. This is not something that's happened to me or anything. Um but the point is that we know almost instantly if something makes us happy or not. Um so, by offering this simplified solution to completing a task, it makes any struggle seem a lot easier to

[10:35] manage. And now, another way of looking at finding hacks to common struggles is to look at uh DIY YouTube videos. Um so, has anyone seen this video about a guy folding a shirt in under 2 seconds? Okay. Um now, this video has over 15 million views. And if you haven't seen it, uh let me tell you about it. It's actually just a guy folding a shirt, and it takes

[10:59] him less than 2 seconds to do so. Um now, me being who I am, I thought, you know, let me test this out. So, I decided to time myself folding a shirt. And shocker, it only took me about 4 seconds. Uh so, why are 15 million people watching this video considering that it's really not that much of a struggle to fold a shirt? Um and considering it only took me 4 seconds, I don't know if I'm should I fall under the world class record of folding shirts in a specific amount of time? Uh but the point is,

[11:31] it's not a big problem, right? But the reason so many people are watching this video is because he's identified a common task that we're all familiar with and that we all do on a day-to-day basis. But the main thing is he's actually structured and simplified that process to make it even easier than it already is. So now something that you think is Now he's structured in a way that makes you think, "Oh, this is actually a complicated task." And he's simplified it when to begin with it was never that difficult in

[11:59] like at all. So now think about some struggles or some tasks that your audience is doing on a day-to-day basis, something that they're very familiar with. And is there a way that you can simplify that process even more? And if you can do that, then you've found a way to provide a hack to a common struggle. So the third principle I want to share with you is the principle of busting a

[12:21] myth. Um, now let's assume that we have a theory which states that content which includes visuals and content without visuals performs equally well. Uh, so your goal, uh, to bust a myth is to actually disprove this theory. So one common example that I want to share with you is of an interactive infographic and an article that my

[12:42] colleague Ryan worked on. Now Ryan wanted to disprove the myth that millennials are lazy and entitled. So what he did is he dissected seven popular myths on the subject, all backed up with credible data from credible resources. And what ended up happening was the article performed very well, um, and it actually got picked up by The Next Web which resulted in a whole new wave of traffic and comments and debate to our

[13:05] site. Um, and I believe now we actually rank long tail on the term old people suck. Go ahead, Google it. Now a common result of using the bust a myth principle is that it does lead to a lot of debate, right? Because you're questioning the strong belief that people have. And I was as a result most companies try to shy away from creating this type of content because they're scared that it's going to make their

[13:30] audience mad. Um but we've actually found that there's a lot more benefit than harm that comes from using this particular principle. Um and that's that it actually leads to uh a lot more conversation, uh which as a result leads to better SEO, right? The more people talking about your content, the more people are linking to it, and as a result, better brand recognition overall. And stronger brand loyalty from the people who do actually agree with you. Um funny enough, this article was actually one of the most controversial pieces that we've done, and we've done a lot of different controversial articles, um but I've never seen anyone so angry

[14:07] about an article before, but it it did get picked up by a lot, and it actually sent a lot of traffic to the site. It was just a weird thing. I don't know, people are very passionate when you start talking about the fact that millennials are not lazy and entitled, all the old people come out from their hiding places, from the

[14:25] casinos in Las Vegas. So, the next principle is to challenge the status quo, and this is somewhat similar to the bust-a-myth principle, um but not identical. And let me give you an example about that. So, Gary V is actually somebody who uses this a lot in his content. Uh and one popular article of his is entitled Super Bowl ads aren't

[14:47] expensive enough. Now, if you're familiar with the Super Bowl, you might be aware that in 2016, the average cost to run an ad on CBS was about $5 million, uh or $170,000 a second. Now, some ad networks charged as much as $10 million a minute for ad time. So, to make a claim that the Super Bowl ads aren't expensive enough seems a bit ridiculous. Um but his argument is that the Super Bowl is actually the one time during the year where people are actually excited to watch the ads. And if you think about it, we've been ingrained to believe that the ads are better than the game itself. Uh so

[15:23] typically we spend hundreds and thousands of dollars, not us but like bigger brands that have money, spend hundreds and thousands of dollars fighting for people's attention. So his argument is that the one time during the year where people are willingly giving up that attention, the cost to get it is only a little bit higher than most big

[15:40] companies' budgets. So using this principle, we decided to do our own piece that challenged the status quo. And we decided to look at close to 200 tweets and looked at the hashtags on Twitter. Um and we decided to state that hashtags are in fact useless in marketing. Now of course this goes this challenges the typical assumption that hashtags actually provide value in marketing. Um and as you can imagine, much like the myth-busting principle, this does cause a lot of controversy and a lot of debate. Um which makes sense, right? If you've been following a belief for your entire career only to be told that it's wrong and you've wasted your time,

[16:21] naturally you're going to get upset about it. Um but like the myth-busting approach, this actually does get people talking about you and gets better brand recognition overall. So the next one I want to cover is to reframe the question. Um and the best example for this is to look at one from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Um so what this organization was trying to do was that they were trying to get people to understand why malaria vaccination is important or why you

[16:49] should care about malaria vaccination. But rather than approaching it in a conventional way, which might be to present the data and the death toll around malaria or malaria death, um what they did is they instead created this infographic on the world's deadliest animals. Now when you take a closer look and you see that nearly 1 million deaths every year are caused by mosquito bites versus 10 deaths a year by shark attacks, the data becomes a lot more surprising and memorable and as a result becomes a lot

[17:21] stickier. So when you're using this principle, you want to first identify what the main question is that you're trying to reframe. In this case, it is why is malaria vaccination important? Um and approach it from a new angle so that people can see it with or come at it with um a different perspective. I can give you guys an example. Um so when I was starting out uh trying to get speaking gigs, uh it wasn't easy because I didn't have any speaking experience as you might imagine. So instead of just writing an open letter to the world saying, "You know what? Here's why I should be a

[17:54] speaker at your conference." I actually decided to look at the diversity at different events. And I analyzed about 15 different conferences and plotted down the female representation versus the male representation. And this article actually ended up going viral within the online marketing space. Um and as a result, I actually got many speaking gigs because of it. So this is an another example of reframing that question. The exact goal of what you're trying to do is not obvious, but it does

[18:23] work. So the sixth principle I want to cover is to bring in a new perspective. Um so what do I mean by this? Well, a lot of content and a lot of marketers tend to tell stories from very conventional perspectives, right? We tend to stick to the obvious frameworks or principles that are given to us. Um so let's say if we're writing an article about sports um or basketball in the current form of Stephen Curry. We typically stick to the general conventions uh or the normal perspectives for a a common sports angle. We might talk about the percentage of shots taken by Stephen

[19:00] Curry. Or we might talk about his performance compared to other players. Uh we might even comment on the fact that his three-point game is statistically unlike any other players and the list goes on and on and on. Now, there's close to hundreds of different articles and infographics and videos out there about uh Stephen Curry's

[19:19] three-point game alone. Um and there's nothing wrong with these stories. They're not bad stories, but they're all the same. And unless you somehow manage to get your piece covered by a channel like ESPN, the truth is nobody's going to care because it's already been done. Um so, this is why it's important to to stand out. And how do you stand out? And that's done by bringing in a new

[19:40] perspective. Um so, here are a few examples of how you can do that. So, the first example looks at CEOs versus athletes and compares their traits. This is still about sports, but now we've bring like we're bringing in this new angle of uh entrepreneurship. The second one looks at NBA valuation and revenue generated per team. And the third one actually uses economics to analyze the cost per shot of various

[20:04] athletes. So, think about um some common traits that you might use and try to move away from this traditional expected um or expected perspective and try to explore topics through a different lens. So, unlike the uh previous principle, which is to reframe the question, uh we're not actually completely changing the angle, we're just applying this new layer over

[20:26] it. Uh and that brings me into the seventh principle, which is to mash up multiple topics. And this is actually one of my favorite ones to use because it's pretty easy to do um and it's a lot of fun to create this type of content. Uh so, the mashup principle is the idea of taking two seemingly unrelated topics and finding a common element that connects them. And this is a great way of combining trending topics with

[20:50] evergreen ideas. Uh now, since Venngage is a design tool, our infographic design content is plenty. So, when the Star Wars movie The Force Awakens came out, rather than writing another article about infographic design, we decided to look at the design trends that could be learned from Star Wars. So, design, which is an evergreen topic for us, and Star Wars, which is a trending topic at the time, uh resulted in the perfect piece of content, which actually ended up getting picked up by Fast Company,

[21:18] and which went viral on 9GAG. Another example is um was done by this analytics company that approached us. And in order to highlight their tool and the type of data it collected, uh they wanted to create an infographic which analyzed the language that was used on Twitter by various presidential candidates. Um and this was an a way for them to demonstrate what their tools' capabilities were. And as a result, this infographic got picked up by Adweek because it was done in a timely in a

[21:46] timely manner uh during the elections. Or this was just before This is as the elections were beginning before a certain candidate entered the running. Um so, what are some possible trending topics that you can um tap into that and combine an element of your business or part of your product to it, whether it's comparing Lord of the Rings to your SEO strategy or Harry Potter to your company culture? Um by using this mashup principle, you're actually able to

[22:14] attract a much wider audience. So, the eighth principle that we'll cover is to go outside of your immediate field. Um so, I'm going to use HubSpot as an example. Are you guys all familiar with HubSpot? I can't see anything, so I'm just going to assume you are. Um and the reason I'm assuming most of you are familiar with HubSpot is because they've positioned themselves as this hub for everything sales and even marketing or sales and marketing related. Um but their primary tool is a CRM. But just because their tool is a CRM doesn't mean that all of their

[22:49] content needs to be about using a CRM. Um they actually branch out into a variety of topics from SEO to content marketing to entrepreneurship to advertising. And as a result, they're now known as this go-to resource for all marketing knowledge. So, try not to focus solely on your immediate field and try to venture outside of that tiny little bubble and find areas that fall outside of that realm and how you can tie them back to your product. Um and I feel like a lot of people try to avoid doing this because they don't think that it's going to result in direct conversions or um easy-to-measure ROI, but the truth is

[23:28] people that go to HubSpot don't go there to buy the CRM, but that's kind of what happens later on and it creates this brand awareness where down the line when maybe they do need a CRM or when somebody else they know might need a CRM, they can redirect them back to that company. So, the next principle is to actually find niches and subcultures to comment on. Um so, for anyone who wasn't aware,

[23:54] I'm from Toronto. Um I tried to make that obvious with the Drake and the hat that I'm wearing. Nobody got it. You guys didn't get it, did you? Um but the point is in Toronto, we have this online Facebook group called BUNS and BUNS is essentially like a trading post on Facebook. Um and in the matter of a few years, this trading zone online has actually become quite massive um and it's exceeded thousands and thousands of people and there's actually multiple subgroups that branch off of the main BUNS group. So, there's the BUNS home zone, there's the BUNS pet zone, there's the BUNS dating zone. Yeah, that's a

[24:31] thing. There's even the BUNS mental health zone. Uh but there's also a BUNS dank meme zone. Now, for any of one that's not familiar with what a dank meme is, um it's just a really hilarious meme. And if you're looking for meme recommendations, please find me after and I'll share some great accounts with you guys. Um but what what's shocking about this particular group is that in just the span of a couple of months, it went from one girl who invited a few friends into a group to share some memes uh to a group of over 3,000 people that actually

[25:02] spanned across Canada, not just Toronto. Um but what's even more fascinating is that this group has actually been written about in the Huffington Post, in EXO Jane, and a few other different publications. Now, why are so many people willing to feature stories about, you know, a group of individuals just sharing funny memes with each other? Why is Reddit such a popular site? And the truth is that people to become very obsessive about subcultures, almost to

[25:29] the point where it becomes cultish. So, using this principle, we decided to create uh a map of all the betrayals that happened in the Game of Thrones. Uh and this was a fun little task for us. What we did is we actually went through the Wikipedias of every single season and mapped out all of the betrayals that happened. Um which was very exciting for

[25:49] our design team. Um but what ended up happening was a a company or a publication called Distractify picked up our piece and actually featured it. Um but then what happened was George Takei shared that article, which resulted in our site crashing from too much traffic. Don't worry, we've upgraded our servers since then. Uh but the thing is subcultures tend to grow very quickly. And if you think about it, Game of Thrones has been around since the early '90s, right? The books have been written for a while. But only recently had it has it gained its

[26:20] traction. Um RuPaul's Drag Race is another show that I really like. Um and it's about drag queens. And when I first looked at the subreddit, which was a couple years ago, um the RuPaul's Drag Race subreddit had about 60,000 active members. And uh that's almost as many people as the marketing subreddit at the time. Um but in the past 24 hours, the top upvoted post on RuPaul's Drag Race had 600 upvotes. And the marketing subreddit, which which still had more people in it, only had um 109 upvotes. So, I actually decided to take another look at the

[26:56] subreddit just a few days ago. And what's interesting is now the RuPaul's Drag Race subreddit has 160,000 active members and the marketing subreddit has about 109,000 active members. But even more shocking is that the top upvoted posts in the RuPaul subreddit is 38,000 versus 745. And the fact is that subcultures really engage people. Generalized topics do,

[27:21] but not nearly to the same extent. So, the next principle, we're almost at the end, bear with me, is to explore and visualize origin stories. So, for every topic there is an origin story of how that thing came to be. You could be talking about coconut oil and there is an origin story of how coconut oil became such a trending

[27:44] topic. Now, is anyone here familiar with the Netflix Marvel series? I feel like this is the perfect audience for Netflix Marvel series. You seem very enthusiastic, Rob. Well, there's always a ton of hype around the launch of a new Marvel series on Netflix. And in fact, according to Business Insider, of the top 10 most viewed original shows on Netflix, three of them, which is Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage, fall within

[28:15] the top most viewed shows. And there's a lot of original content on Netflix, so this is a pretty big factor. In fact, superhero movies in general are some of the highest grossing films in Hollywood. And in 2016, of the top 10 highest grossing movies in Hollywood, four of them were superhero movies. Now, I know what you're thinking. You You need to start creating some superhero content for your site. No,

[28:40] that's not what I'm saying. You don't need to create articles or content or infographics about people getting bitten by spiders and developing fantastic abilities about from using your product. Um but you can actually comment and investigate on the origin stories of specific fields of interests, of industries, and companies, and of influential people. And if you think about it, we've all heard of the stories of people like Steve Jobs and Richard Branson building themselves up from these tiny garage workshops. And these are the ones that engage us and that inspire us to do

[29:12] great things. So what types of origin stories can you tell? And one of the most common ways of depicting origin stories in content marketing is through the use of timelines. Um so here are a couple examples that I like that stand out to me a lot. So the one at the on this side right here is the history of Google I/O. So we actually put this together during the I/O conference and we just created a

[29:35] timeline of everything that happened. And because it was on trend and because it told this history of Google, um a lot of different sites picked it up including Business Insider. The one in the middle is a very popular one by uh this designer called Anna Vital. Um she actually has a Pinterest account and if you look at her account, every single one of these posts has over 50,000 shares. Um and she actually has tons of different infographics that are just timelines and origin stories of these

[30:00] successful entrepreneurs. So when you're looking to use this principle, um try to think of aspects within your own industry that have a fascinating story that you can tell and a history that you can share with your audience. Um and if you can identify those, then actually tell that story because it might not be directly related to your company, but it will engage people and get them to find your product and to

[30:26] find your website. Now the next principle is all about envisioning the before and after state of your users. Um so for every product or every company, we have a before state, um which is your user before they find your product, uh and an after state, which is them once they have found your product. So, your goal is to help your customer

[30:48] achieve that after state. Um so, before the before and after state is broken down into four primary categories. What your customer has, what they feel, the average day in their life, and their overall status. Um so, let's look at an example and I'll use the example of baby bathtubs. You know those like small squishy tubs that

[31:08] you put in the sink? I guess. I don't know. I don't know how babies work. Um I think that's what they do. Anyway, so the before and after state is that we're probably marketing to the parent, most likely the mother. Uh and before the mother has this cold hard tub, and afterwards she has this warm squishy tub for her sink. Uh before of course she feels scared and frustrated because, you know, she's going to drop her baby into the big tub um because babies are slippery or

[31:35] something, right? I don't know. But afterwards she feels confident and in control because her baby is secure in the squishy tub. Before our bath time is terrible, again she's scared of dropping her baby. Um but afterwards bath time becomes a breeze because the baby's not going to fall out of the small squishy tub. And of course before she feels unappreciated because her baby's like, "Why you keep dropping me in this big

[31:57] tub?" Um and then afterwards she's the super mom because baby's like, "Yo, you did it. You got me into the tub. I didn't fall out." This is what I assume it's like to have children. It's just this constant struggle of will I drop it? Clearly I don't have any kids. Um if I did, that would be a problem. Uh but the point is that you want to look at the before and after state and create the situation for um for your

[32:24] user. So, when you're working uh when you're working on your own content, try to use this checklist when speaking to your audience. Tell them what they have now versus what they'll have later. Tell them how they feel now versus how they'll feel later and so on and so forth. Uh and if you're interested in learning more about this concept, there's a really great article by Digital Marketer um on customer value optimization, uh which I recommend checking out. Um and I will be giving a link to the slide deck after this, so

[32:50] the link will be in that slide deck. Um and finally, the last principle seems like a given in most situations, and that is include a reason to share, but I think a lot of people forget what that really means. Um and it doesn't mean asking your audience to just please share this post on Twitter at the end of an email. Um it means really asking yourself, "Why should I share this, and will this help

[33:14] somebody better express themselves?" So, why is it that everything that the Trump administration does seems to go viral? Um why are so many people, even those that typically don't follow politics, getting so riled up about this particular president? And without going into too much unnecessary detail, it comes down to one thing, which is emotion. Most of the things that Trump says are either either completely approved of and loved, or completely abhorred and

[33:43] detested. There really isn't like a happy medium. But because of this passionate love and hate, people are becoming inspired uh to act in order to have their voices heard. Um and what happens is when Trump makes a claim like something like his travel ban on Muslims, or the fact that climate change doesn't exist, uh the people that agree with him tend to express themselves in that way, and the people that are against him tend to lash out, and then it becomes this ongoing cycle where everyone's retaliating against

[34:12] each other. So, when people care about something, what they do is they act in response to that care, and they speak out in response to that care. Now, it might not be as easy to get somebody emotional about, let's say, a social analytics company, but what people do get emotional about are the stories of other people. So, Founder Magazine is a company that really taps into this well. Um, and they actually sell a course on to teach people how to grow their Instagram

[34:41] followings. Um, but instead of just telling people to buy this course, they actually share the success stories of their audience or people that have completed the course. And what ends up happening is that business businesses or entrepreneurs that have found success share those stories with their audience and then people from their audience who are inspired and motivated end up taking up the course and sharing their own successes once they've completed it as well. Uh, so it continues the cycle in

[35:07] that way. So, does your company have any of these great success stories that are the result of your product? Um, and can you share those stories with your audience in order to strike this emotional chord? So, here's a quick recap of all of the 12 principles that we've gone through. In case anyone wants to take a picture. Sorry, I I did he Does he want me to go back? You were like in the middle. You were like, I got my camera ready and then I was like, never mind, just

[35:39] kidding. I'll go back. Just kidding. Oh, sorry. Did Were you trying to take a picture? No, go ahead. Go ahead. I won't do it again. Okay. He's like, please leave me alone. Um, but the point is remember that setting limitations for yourselves is actually a really great way to fuel uh, your own creativity and to come up with these engaging stories that will in turn inspire and motivate your audience um, and get them to become more passionate

[36:06] about your brand. Um, so before I go uh, I understand that for many of you it's probably harder to create this content because you might not have the budget, you might not have the team. Um, so one thing that we're working on is we're working on a new product but um, in order to collect some data, we've decided to create free infographics in exchange. Not a sales pitch, I promise you. You will get an email from me, but it'll be like, can you fill out this form so I can create an infographic for you. Um, so if you're interested in that, I won't go into too much detail,

[36:34] but you can find me later and we can talk. Um, but you can just follow this link. You can get a free design and you'll also get the slide decks by following this link. So, this is You can take a picture of this. I won't I won't switch the slide, I promise. Go ahead, I'm waiting. In the meantime,

[36:50] does anyone have any questions? Thanks, Nadia.

[36:59] All right, we have time for a couple questions.

[37:09] Did you get the picture? Okay, I'm really happy. Okay. You've created some really cool infographics using some very popular IP. Has there ever been any pushback from J.K. Rowling, Disney, etc. about like you sort of leveraging their super popular thing and their names and their pictures? Um, no. And if you look online, there's so much fan fiction and so much fan

[37:29] created content about these big brands. They're way too big, they don't care enough. Um, and all we're doing is we're sorting people into like houses based on their company culture, creating a map to help users actually watch Game of Thrones better. Um, so we've never had any issues. The only The only area that you actually do you might find a problem is if you're using that content in advertising, um, and you might like use Oprah Winfrey's face as an advertisement to state that Oprah approves of your

[37:58] product, then that's an area of concern. But if you're just using the brand and using it as like a trending topic, I don't think we've we've never had any issues. Any other questions? Jeez. Have you created content around a very factual topic? Um yeah, we have. Um well, aside from like the Google I/O thing, we've created content around our own tools' capabilities as well. Kind of like I was talking about the social the example I

[38:34] gave about the Twitter analysis data. That tool was a very social analytics tool and it wasn't when they approached me I was like, "I don't get what you guys are doing." Um and they just provided me with the data and then we created we pulled in another topic that we could leverage to make it more interesting. Um but the thing is like any trending topic,

[38:55] somebody else was asking me about this. We're right now for instance at Funko, we're working on creating these like road map templates, which aren't that exciting. Um but one thing that we might be able to do is like create a road map for Jessica Jones on finding Kilgrave. Like that's one way to just pull in that

[39:10] trending topic. That makes sense? Hey, um the the quality of the the kind of uh traffic that you get, is that something that you kind of target? Cuz obviously like if if you're in a specific space or niche or industry, uh you know, you want kind of quality uh leads and that sort of stuff coming in. It seems like you know, if if you kind of go really wide and you're going Jessica Jones or whatever, you're going to get a bunch of randoms coming in. Is the philosophy sort of you know, you'll cast a big net and you'll get quality kind of out of it or

[39:43] do you do anything specifically in your strategy to try and, you know, pick up the subculture or whatever that's going to be Yeah. Associated with your industry or whatever. So, our goal we have a few different goals. Um but when it comes to traffic, the the viral concepts that we're creating um is actually to get PR mentions. Um and as a result, by getting high authority sites mentioning us, we can increase our own brand visibility, our own domain authority, which in turn

[40:10] helps push up all of our other content. Um but for instance with the Game of Thrones piece, we got 100,000 views in the span of two days. None of those people converted, but we saw an overall trend of like uplift across the site, and that's because Google was seeing all of this traffic coming to our site, and it helped

[40:31] give us more visibility online. Um and like I said, it's brand awareness, right? If you If you have more content out there and more people talking about you and knowing about you, they'll be more likely to remember you when they actually do need to use something like you.

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