How to increase the chances of your content going viral?

This is an excerpt from my book: The riches are not necessarily in the niches - the cash is in the community, as there are enough drop shipping businesses that have saturated many Amazon and Alibaba categories. There are enough publishing businesses that are creating small books for Kindle and CreateSpace on a whole variety of different topics. There are enough YouTube channels talking about gadgets, games and make-up. The supply of content, whether it is on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and elsewhere is exponential and has been so for the past few years, yet demand has moved little, or remained static. How can you increase the demand for your content? How can you increase your community's demand for you and/or your products and services? It is down to trust and passing what is called the "so what?" test.The "so what?" test means that your content has got to intrigue, grab the attention of and mean enough for your audience in order for them click and consume it. You have to persuade people enough to give you their time and attention, which this can only be done if they care more about the information, topic or if your content creates a big enough knowledge gap (which will be talked about later in this book) that drives them to know more. Your content has got to be compelling enough to persuade people to stop what they are currently doing, so as to consume your blog or video.People talk about "create compelling content" but that is too vague, meaningless and not very actionable. The benchmark that I feel that is much more practical is to create content that is very VRINE.VRINE stands for valuable, rare, inimitable, non-substitutable and evergreen. As you create content that people care, talk about, love and share then it is compelling by default. Do not publish something unless passes these with flying colours.Use this benchmark as you are deciding what and how to create your content; rate each of them on scale from 0-10, then you would want to ensure that it is at least a 7/10 for each of the words. Because you do not want to publish sub-par content that no one cares about.V - Valuable. Your content has got to "add value" to your audience. It is has to enlighten, reassure, educate, entertain, etc. If you do not add value then your content is pointless or misleading, because you have to deliver on the information that you are promising them that they will learn if they click on your video or begin reading your blog. I have always found the phrase "add value" to be too vague, so it is better to focus on solving real world problems and providing solutions to your audience and customers, otherwise, they will derive no value from your content and go elsewhere. As you understand who it is you are serving, then you can create and provide exact value to them by solving exact problems they may have. When you are providing value then you are increasing the chances of your content passing the "so what?" test, therefore helping them to view your content as compelling.R - Rare. The rarer and/or more scarce your content is, the higher the intrinsic value that your audience places upon it will be. If you were to take a picture of a flower that blossoms only once a year then that picture would be quite rare. Content has to be rare for people to care about it, otherwise if it is something common then people will not care about it as much. If your advice can be found anywhere and everywhere online, or it is the first thing that appears on the Google search result, then people do not care for it as much, as there is plenty of competition that is giving away the same, similar or better information and advice onlineI - Inimitable. Your competition can imitate your content and attempt to steal your market share. A picture of the same flower that blossoms once a year but in the background of one of your selfies, whilst holding today's newspaper, then you are making it rare and inimitable. If you are talking about a topic that anyone can talk about too, then you need to differentiate yourself more so. This in turn spurs you to add more value, thereby making it harder for your competition to imitate and you are adding more value to your audience.N - Non-substitutable. If you want to travel somewhere you have different choices: car, train, plane, etc. If you cannot drive, then a substitute would be to get the train. If there is no substitute for your content or solution, they your audience will value it even more, because only you can solve their specific problem or have a solution. When there are alternatives to their problems, then they may go elsewhere. If you can provide a unique solution or have a unique angle to something, then people will care about you more so.E - Evergreen. Throughout the year people will search for different things online, therefore some keywords and content are seasonal. For instances the phrase "Christmas gift ideas" will be searched a lot from October - December, but there may not be as many searches in June or July. However, something more evergreen such as "how to drive a car" will be searched for consistently throughout the year, meaning that it is resulting in consistent traffic and awareness. By creating content that is consistently searched for throughout the year then you are more likely to get predictable traffic, engagement and sales. Your content has to be created and positioned in a way so that it is searched for throughout the year.Question of the day: How are you increasing the chances of your content going viral?