Is your business a Sharknado?
Recently, the SyFy channel aired one of its made for TV movie creations–Sharknado. Yes, it's a terrifying shark inland invasion created by a hurricane-turned-water spout tornado. Sharks swimming in flooded waters, just waiting to attack you in your car, while you're suspended from a bridge, or even on the staircase of your two story house. Take note: make sure you're friends with a shotgun wielding hottie to increase your chances of survival. I watched it for a good laugh.
What's truly phenomenal is not the film itself, but the Sharknado frenzy that occurred just before the film aired. The SyFy channel execs started hitting Twitter hard about the film about 30 minutes prior to airtime. Super-tweeter and actor, Wil Wheaton shared it with his twitter followers, and the rest was history. Now executives are working on Sharknado 2.
Here's how can you apply the Sharknado Effect to your business:
1) Create remarkable content (in the case of Sharknado–‘remarkable' being a relative term) that helps address your audience's pain point. Appeal to your audience through story and emotion, and make them feel exclusive.
I know–this is the hard part. Some sites turn out content like chum–and that's exactly what it is–fish food. Content creation is not a churn-and-burn process. Truly remarkable content requires thoughtful planning, research and time to create. Remarkable content that is helpful in some way and is presented in a manner that makes itself easy to be shared will get more traction than fluff. If you are feeling stuck on the content generation part–hop over to this article about discovering great topics or try checking out CopyBlogger. The CopyBlogger site has some excellent tips and advice to get you unstuck.
Here's another shark attack: give your content away for free, especially if it's your BEST content. What? Why would you even consider giving away your best content? Because this is part of the process of proving your worth. If you're giving away remarkable content, then imagine what you'll do for a client once they pay you.
2) Take a tip from the Sharknado executives–share your remarkable content on social media channels and to your email subscriber list. One piece of brilliant content can keep performing for you. Follow a weekly marketing content-drip strategy. Here's an example:
Monday – Write your blog post and publish it with a photo that includes a link back to your article page.
Tuesday – Email it to your subscribers. And tweet about it on Twitter and ask for retweets (RT).
Wednesday – Post about it on Facebook – your personal and business pages.
Thursday – Pin it with your photo on Pinterest with a link back to your blog. Share it on LinkedIn in your status and in your groups.
Friday – Tweet about it (again) with a different wording and link to your site. Ask for retweets (RT).
Saturday – Google your article title to see if it's been indexed and that you have Google authorship. With Google authorship, you'll see your cute photo in the Google search listing next to your article.
3) Enlist the help of peers to give you that extra push. Wil Wheaton retweeting to his followers helped give Sharknado the extra momentum for a huge ripple effect seen across not only Twitter, but Facebook too.
You can do the same. Ask business peers to share your content. Or get even more fervor with an offer to write an exclusive follow-up piece to your great content as a guest post on their site. Guest posting is a win-win strategy for both you and your friend–you both get exposure to a new list thereby opening up the possibility for new subscribers. Not to mention that links between sites helps your SEO.
4) Follow up with your sequel or an even better piece of content. If something works–repeat. Hollywood applies this principle all the time. There will probably be a Sharknado 5 before it's all said and done.
If you missed the mark this time out–don't give up. Hollywood never does. Remember that you can learn from each experience and keep tweaking the process. You're building your name and reputation. There is no rule that you can't go back and rewrite a blog post or article on your site, reworking it to contain key search words. Try morphing your content into a different platform–like a video, audiocast, or infographic. If it's a hot pain point for your target audience–this is never a waste time. You'll never know what's going to cause the feeding frenzy for your business unless you're willing to put your self out there in the water and try.
