We’ve heard the term time and time again, ‘it’s going viral!’. The common understanding is that a certain piece of content (articles, video, audio, multimedia etc.) is getting a lot of attention and is being widely popularized, shared and talked about online. As all things, the feeling is different when you are looking in compared to when you are experiencing it firsthand.

Viral content does not happen on a daily basis, in fact they’re a dime a dozen, a rare breed of content akin to striking a lottery. Why do we say so? It’s because the results can be so overwhelming that it’s hard to believe.

Recently we had the honor of experiencing the viral effect from a piece of seemingly simple shared content on one of our Facebook community pages.

The content was of a waterspout forming off the shores of Tanjung Tokong, Penang. It was the biggest waterspout ever seen near Penang, and to be honest, looked quite terrifying (considering Malaysia is a country that is free from most major natural disasters) by Malaysian standards.

The post is seen below, with accompanying stats. The kicker of it all, this incident happened on 1 April, April Fools day. This left people to wonder whether this was a joke, we were a bit skeptical at first and hesitated to share the video at first. However, after confirming its authenticity, we quickly shared the short clip on the Penangite page and the rest was history.

Within hours we saw our Page Likes and Followers double, then tripled. Post engagement was going through the roof as well, from hundreds of comments, it quickly went to 500 comments by evening, by the end of the day we were nearing 700 comments.

The number of people reached was just staggering, as we scrambled to respond to incoming comments, we saw the numbers keep climbing, 100,000 people reached, 150,000 people reached, 300,000 people reached… by the end of April Fools day, we had close to 400,000 people reached organically, all from this short video clip.

As of today, our Page Likes have grown from a measly 520 to over 2000 Page Likes and Followers.

Now the purpose of this post is not to boast or gloat in our glory (well maybe a little), but it is to show the potential of social media and what it could mean for your business if a single piece of content went viral.

The results we’ve shown here is definitely not the best, but it illustrates the power of going viral on social media, and how it can propel a business from mediocre to greatness in just a matter of hours.

You may visit the Facebook Page from the below links to check out the post yourself:

Penangite Facebook Page

The post that went viral

You may also benefit from using a too like Notifier to pick up on the latest trends and content ideas or you could be interested to read more about the benefits of social media marketing for your business.

Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any enquiries on how we can help grow your business using digital technologies and online channels.

Contact us today for a FREE consultation.