Our agency, Big Leap, has the pleasure of working with a variety of clients in a wide array of industries. One of our clients, Extra Space Storage, deals with self storage units. As you’d guess, self storage is a great industry for new, exciting content. You can write about packing boxes, storing antiques, how to have an easy move, umm…and how to pack more boxes. Okay, so it’s not the most exciting industry for which to create content.
So we stepped out of the box - pun intended - and decided to focus on…parenting. You might be a little confused on how a storage center and parenting tie in together. Well, trust us and watch the video. With that being said, here’s how we took their content and helped it go viral.
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Have Great Content This is always easier said than done, but the first step is to have great content. We don’t just mean a professionally done video or a really nice infographic; take a step to the next level. Does this content speak to you and to your audience? Anyone can create a parenting “cheat sheet” or video - a quick Google search shows about 124 MILLION results. So what made ours stand out? It was honest and funny.
Now, not every honest and funny thing you create will go viral. Sometimes, viral content is shocking or surprising facts. The important thing is that they’re more than just numbers or a creative list, they tell a story with which your audience can connect. That leads us to our second point: you need to know your audience.
Know Your Audience When we had our finished product we needed to get the word out. Our PR team created a list of key media outlets that we wanted to target in order to do so. We knew that the video was directed to first-time parents, but that it would also resonate with parents of all ages, so we told our PR team to pursue that angle.
Our team approached major media outlets (e.g. Huffington Post, Buzzfeed and Mashable with the video and crafted specialized pitches for each site. Because each site carries different types of media we made sure that each pitch was crafted to appeal to their readers. We knew, even before approaching these sites, what type of content they had and how to position the video to their readers. One site was just the video with a small write-up while another one was GIFS of the video to tell the story, and in each case we knew what each site wanted before we sent an email. After a few key placements, the video began to take off.
Ride the Wave Now that you’ve got some momentum from key media placements, you can ride that success. That doesn’t mean just reporting to your boss that you did a great job, but it means taking that success and building upon it. You can boost your sites domain authority by making sure that all of the sites that host the video are linking back to your site. Also, look for different ways to position it now that it’s been successful. Extra Space Storage got a placement in Adweek where it focuses on the unique angle of the video.
What We Learned The main thing that we learned is that it is a lot easier say “make great content” than to actually do it. It takes a lot of hard work to make something great. We also learned that even if you’re in the self storage industry you can expand your reach from beyond packing boxes. When we started to pitch media outlets about the video we didn’t even target storage industry sites until the end of our campaign.
We also learned that the news cycle is like a flash fire - it starts really fast and dies really fast. We had about a 7 - 10 day window from when we started seeing success and when the newness of the video wore off. Lastly, we learned the importance of understanding your audience and making sure that content resonates with them. Take these tips and you’ll do great! Hopefully!
via buzzfeed
About the Author
Eric Serdar is an Online Marketing Specialists at Big Leap. He oversees content creation, promotion, media pitching, SEO tactics, and social media. You can contact him at eric@bigleap.com.
