Viral Marketing And Unreal Traffic Loads

Viral marketing is one of the most successful marketing campaigns and a way to grow your social media following and client base. However, some challenges to this method are possible, which we explore further in the article. When you start a marketing campaign, you can scrape comments from various sites, for example, you can scrape YouTube comments. This process will give you an idea of trending subjects you can use in your campaign. However, first, we need to look into the definition of viral marketing.

What’s This Strategy

Viral marketing is a marketing campaign spread by users. It uses visual content and subjects that become viral, meaning extremely popular, and is shared widely across the globe in a short timeframe. 

Your campaign isn’t guaranteed to become that popular, as some of it is up to luck. However, you can maximize your chances by researching which subjects and topics are popular. One way to find out what’s trending is to scrape YouTube comments.

Often, the fastest way to spread a viral topic or campaign is by using social platforms. These platforms include YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, and more. As such, you must adapt your posts to fit one of the social platforms to create viral content.

Most Significant Platform

Reddit is currently the most significant social platform where businesses launch viral campaigns. There are millions to billions of Reddit users, so sharing a thread or campaign with other users is easy. It also means your campaign can spread worldwide in the blink of an eye. 

 In 2022, Reddit had around 1.7 billion visits in one month, making it one of the web traffic powerhouses. As such, it’s also perfect for any marketing campaign. However, there are some risks you must keep in mind if your campaign goes viral on Reddit.

Overloaded Server Traffic

One of the risks of this marketing strategy is an overloaded server. Not all servers can handle thousands of requests in a short period. Yet, that’s what can happen when something goes viral. Suddenly, everyone wants to access your website, and soon you’re sitting with an overloaded server due to high traffic.

When your server overloads, it can crash your website, which means no one can access it. It can take time to get your website up and running again, which means no clients can access it in the meantime. Moreover, if your marketing becomes popular, then even if you get your website operating again, it’ll just crash again because of the load.

Once a website crashes, it creates a reputation for sloppy software, or that the site can’t handle lots of traffic, which diminishes the interest in your website. Once that happens, you risk losing customers, the exact opposite of what you wanted to achieve with this campaign.

Reddit Hug Of Death

Reddit is such a massive web traffic powerhouse and has been the start of many viral trends that users created a name for when websites crash due to traffic load. It’s called the Reddit Hug of Death, as Reddit users basically suffocate the website and cause it to shut down. 

How this happens is if thousands to millions of people click on the link in the Reddit post, an unprepared website can’t handle the load and crashes. This phenomenon creates a dead link in the article, meaning if users click on it, it doesn’t take them anywhere, or a 404 error message pops up.

The Reddit Hug of Death may sound mythical, but it frequently happens, and you should prepare for it when planning a viral marketing campaign. While it’s more known to occur via Reddit, it can theoretically happen with any popular social platform, even YouTube.

Relevance To Content Marketers

Content marketers can only benefit from a viral campaign, provided they prepare for all possibilities. If you’re creating a marketing strategy that you hope becomes that popular, you should first ensure you’re prepared for it to go viral. That means if you’re advertising a product, to have plenty in stock, with the ability to source more quickly. 

It also means ensuring your website or app is prepared to handle the traffic it might receive. It’s best to test your website beforehand. Do a load test to see how much traffic your site can take, and if you find it insufficient, then improve it. It’ll be too late for most campaigns if you try to improve it after users try to access it and fail.

All About Viral Marketing

Viral marketing can lift a business from bankruptcy if it’s done right. Plan your strategy carefully and scrape YouTube comments and other sites for inspiration. For a viral campaign to be successful, it doesn’t just need to become viral. It also needs to keep that interest and be prepared to handle the traffic load it might experience. Before starting this strategy, ensure you don’t become a Hug of Death victim and test your platform’s load capacity.