Going Viral: A Facebook Case Study

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to go viral?

On Wednesday last week, one of my clients went viral! And it was incredibly exciting. For months we have been testing content, ads, and strategies to see what works and what gets engagement – and last week it paid off. 

Their average reach for a posted average around 200-300 organically – this one post was at 72,000 and counting just 24 hours later!

Today this post has reached over 800,000 people! Look at the statistics of increases – how would you like a 53,000 percent increase in post engagement?

This is what it looks like when something goes viral, exciting huh?!

So now, I bet you want to know what the secret to going viral is.

Well, there isn’t one – we didn’t know this was going viral, we probably would have planned for a different post to go viral if we had a choice. So how did we do it?

There is no simple answer – the truth is, we worked hard. We posted content regularly, and we were constantly on the lookout for new content, new ad campaigns, and new strategies.

We were running Facebook Ads to try and bring in new weight loss clients for this company, we were testing ads to see what worked and what drove the most traffic. During this testing phase, we discovered that people love food! This client of mine doesn’t sell food – they sell training and supplements. But, people still love food.

So we started testing a few more ads, created an opt-in for a Free Recipe Book – that they usually sell, and started creating more food-based ads. Their ads started to drastically improve. 

We then decided to test this theory on the page itself. And Tasty Tuesday was born. It doesn’t look amazing, it’s simply a recipe and an image – it doesn’t link anywhere.

And guess what, it had the highest engagement of any post. This continues week in and week out. And then we posted this recipe, and it went nuts! People from all over the world were sharing it and tagging their friends.

What can you learn from this?

• Keep testing, always – You never know what you’ll learn. Try things, even if you don’t know if they will work. Try the dumb ideas – sometimes they work!
• Look at your statistics, it’s the easiest way to see your results and to keep tabs on what’s happening and what’s getting the best engagement
• Watch what others are doing. Keep a screenshot scrapbook of ads you see on your feed that are targeting similar people to you. What are they doing? What results do they get? What is one strategy they are using that you can implement?
• Most importantly, keep trying. Facebook and Marketing are not exact sciences – what works one day, won’t necessarily work the next. And what works for one company might not work for you. Get creative and keep trying and testing!