Beat The Algorithm: The Key to Virality
- Kawtar Rettab
- Sep 27
- 17 min read
This article explores the strategies behind virality, particularly in social media and eCommerce, delving into how social platforms make money, the algorithms that drive them, and how businesses can leverage these social media components to succeed. By understanding the factors that drive platform-specific algorithms and how businesses and creators can utilize them, we find actionable insights to achieve success through social media marketing. The findings of this article are relevant to both individual content creators and businesses.
1.1 Introduction
Social media has sparked a cultural revolution that cannot be undone. To some, social media is just a means of communication; but for the vast majority, it is a tool used for news, entertainment, and education. As of 2024, 5.07 billion people use social media, making it an unavoidable source of communication for businesses of all industries. Consequently, virality has become an important, low-cost method for corporations to advertise to the masses. Furthermore, there have been drastic changes in societal habits where people spend more time finding entertainment on devices rather than real-life experiences compared to 20 years ago, which has made short-form videos one of the most consumed forms of media.
Online entertainment has become a prominent daily activity, rising from 21.25 to 24 weekly hours from 2003 to 2015 where active leisure time fell from around 11 to 10 hours, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In this article, we decode the science of virality, the factors behind it, and how it drives consumer behaviors and reshapes eCommerce, specifically in the form of short-form videos. To benefit from social media platforms, one must understand the rules to maximize their chances of success. There is a science behind the algorithm, and in combination with linguistic and visual devices, businesses and creators can produce valuable content to achieve their goals.
1.2 Virality
Virality is defined as “the tendency of an image, video, or piece of information to be circulated rapidly and widely from one internet user to another.” Despite popular belief, virality has applicable tactics not based on just coincidence or luck. Many figureheads and businesses have social media teams that promote content effectively, not through paid ads but by creating viral content. Time is a valuable asset, and virality means hundreds of hours of consumers spending the most valuable asset in existence on your business. Although “going viral” is often associated with a short-lived time of fame, businesses such as Duolingo or RedBull have managed to consistently make viral content.
So, what does it take to go viral? According to an article published in the Marketing Intelligence Review, online content that evokes strong or “high-arousal” emotions, contains useful information, and fosters connections are more likely to be shared organically. By understanding these dynamics, creators can design content that not only attracts initial engagement but also encourages ongoing sharing, fueling a self-sustaining cycle of exposure and interaction.
2. The Social Media Market
To understand how to make viral content on a social media platform, one must understand the mechanisms of the platform. The primary purpose of a social media platform is to earn a profit through its consumer-to-consumer business model. Creators produce content, while social media companies facilitate the transaction. Platforms derive value from network effects: more users lead to increased content production and viewership. As platforms grow, posting content becomes more rewarding, benefiting both creators and the platform through ad revenue, subscriptions, or expanding user bases. Unlike traditional business models, content creation operates as a consumer-to-consumer (C2C) system. Social media apps function as digital “marketplaces”, displaying content creators’ products without producing them directly. Both creators and platforms profit: creators can compete for the watch time of millions of users, providing value to the platform while engaging consumers. The market structure resembles a monopolistic (imperfect) competition, with low entry barriers, and a highly saturated market in which creators have very similar chances of going viral and getting subscribers. However, the good news is that not only are there excessive amounts of creators, but also many viewers who spend hours per day consuming content. As of 2024, there are around 65.3 million creators and 2.49 billion daily active users on YouTube.
Digital products such as short-form videos are intangible and indefinite; despite their permanence, they often achieve virality only once, experiencing a surge in views and revenue before eventually falling out of the algorithm's cycle. After peak virality, views usually plateau and can earn some consistent revenue over time. Much like physical products, digital products follow a product life cycle: starting with an introduction, growth as views increase, and reaching maturity at the height of their virality. At this stage, content can be reposted, copied, or phased out of the algorithm’s recommendations in favor of newer content. To maintain a consistent income from content creation, producing highly searchable, mainstream videos that are timeless and informative is ideal for compounding consistent earnings over time. Alternatively, one can focus on creating content that is consistently viral. For individual content creators, both approaches are relevant. For businesses conducting viral marketing, the latter is preferable, aiming to reach the largest audience possible for effective advertising.
What sets successful social media creators apart is not just their ability to go viral once but to do so consistently to capitalize upon it. As aforementioned, a common misconception is that algorithms simply favor some users over others and that virality is purely a product of luck. While randomness plays a small role, there is a strategy and a science behind virality. Those who go viral do so because they often, knowingly or unknowingly, follow the unspoken rules of virality.
3. Understanding the Social Media Platform
3.1 Revenues of Social Media Platforms
The core objective of social media platforms is to maximize user engagement, retention, and watch time. These metrics are closely tied to their primary income source: advertising revenue. Longer watch times result in more ad impressions and thus higher earnings. Content creators also gain a share of this revenue, though for many, it is an insignificant stream of income unless they achieve exceptionally high subscriber counts and viewership. In addition to advertising, platforms can generate income through additional features such as subscription services or integrating e-commerce platforms (e.g., Facebook Marketplace and Instagram or Snapchat subscriptions).
To achieve sustained growth, platforms must attract new users and retain existing ones. Retention can be achieved by delivering the optimal user experience, featuring high-quality, personalized content designed to entertain or inform. However, optimizing engagement to such an extent often leads to an epidemic of overconsumption of dopamine-inducing content. User growth has multiple advantages such as increasing the platform’s stock value, ad revenues, data collection for algorithm improvement or sale, premium subscription sales (e.g., YouTube Premium, Instagram Subscriptions), and raises the overall business value through network effects.
This growth cycle draws in more creators, who serve as informal contributors to the platform’s value delivery. More creators lead to competition and content diversity, driving improvements in content quality over time; much like the dynamics of a traditional marketplace. The cumulative growth and value of a growing user base make social media platforms highly attractive to viewers seeking quality content, individual creators, and brands seeking expanded reach.
Platform | Revenue Model |
YouTube |
|
| |
Discord |
|
| |
TikTok |
|
X (Twitter) |
|
Table 1.1 How Exactly Do Social Media Platforms Make Money?
3.2 Costs of Social Media Platforms
The growth of social media platforms also increases costs as they incur significant expenses to accommodate their users, particularly for data storage. More users result in higher bandwidth and data storage costs. These costs are directly tied to user growth due to the permanent and compounding nature of digital data. As platforms attract more users, they face rising expenses for storing large volumes of content, such as posted, liked, or saved media. For example, Facebook processes billions of uploads monthly, necessitating continuous investment in data storage and cybersecurity systems. Bandwidth infrastructure represents another notable expense as social media platforms require high-speed networks and server capacities to allow quick global communication. For instance, YouTube’s bandwidth costs in 2009 were estimated by Credit Suisse to be as high as $470 million. However, recent data on such costs are unavailable, as social media companies generally do not publish specifics.
Another significant cost is content moderation and security. While AI has increasingly been employed for moderation, human moderators are still necessary, particularly to address inappropriate or harmful content that occasionally slips through automated systems. These failures have led to backlash, prompting social media platforms to invest further in safety measures and content filters. Compliance with privacy laws, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), also demands substantial resources for data governance and user rights management, further adding to operational costs. Social media platforms profitability typically increases with a larger user base. As monopolies in their respective niches, they are theoretically highly profitable.
3.3 Understanding the Platform’s Algorithm
The way algorithms function is based on several data factors, including watch time, likes/dislikes, interactions, who the user follows, caption details, hashtags, shareability, location, and more. By analyzing engagement data, the algorithm uses statistical models and likelihood assessments to deliver content that a user is most likely to watch for the longest duration. This forms an intricate web of videos that are geared to specific audiences. As large platforms gain more data and diversity of content, it is more likely that certain videos will reach the right audiences. The algorithm starts with mainstream videos, and then tests new content based on viewership patterns. The primary objective of most algorithms is to create the “most engaging” (or, more accurately, addictive) user experience, keeping users on the platform for as long as possible.
The viral coefficient measures the number of users gained through existing users sharing content. While watch time is the most critical metric for evaluating engagement, it does not provide sufficient information about the nature of the content on its own. Watch time is determined by the type of content produced, as different types of content prioritize varying engagement metrics. This dynamic enables content to maximize exposure through organic distribution.
Metrics such as likes, dislikes, and views also play a significant role in influencing content perception. Through the psychological effect of social proof, these visible indicators signal to potential viewers that a particular video is worth watching and conveys a valuable message. As a result, the algorithm is more likely to recommend such content to a broader audience. Furthermore, the algorithm will understand the user’s preferences by their likes, dislikes, saves, and sharing behavior. The progression of viral content can be categorized into four stages: creation, peak virality, saturation, and decline. As seen from the figure below, views will peak more drastically sooner in 2010 compared to 2008.
According to the Adobe-owned analytics company, TubeMogul, a YouTube video receives its first 50% of views on its first 6 published days. There are various phenomena that result in a video accumulating views. The first is audience amplification, where the channel's existing subscribers will view the video. The next is if the channel is growing, these new audience members will also seek similar videos and thus amplify the viewership. Thirdly is trendjacking, where a trending topic emerges and causes a video to go viral. Fourth is social triggers, where particular products or videos may come to mind by coincidence. For example, cafe searches increase in the mornings. Lastly, taking advantage of repeated searches can reach audiences for extended periods of time, causing surges in views. To achieve this, SEO can be optimized by utilizing tags and keywords to reach audiences most likely to engage with it.
Advertisements are also tailored to specific audiences, and videos that enable ads to be played are prioritized. As aforementioned, when optimizing for KPIs on social media platforms, likes and dislikes enable users to refine the algorithm’s predictions. Videos with higher numbers of likes and saves are prioritized by the algorithm, gaining greater visibility. Another crucial factor is shareability; how likely is your content to be shared with friends, family, colleagues, or others? This metric can be quantified through the referral traffic percentage (Referral Views/Total Views * 100) or the share-to-views ratio. Content optimization involves experimenting with various formats and styles while maintaining a consistent upload schedule. Regular postings across various social media platforms not only enhance audience engagement but also help the algorithm better adapt to your target audience. Posting during peak engagement periods further maximizes visibility and impact.
3.4 Advertisement Algorithm
Social media platforms rely heavily on ad revenue, thus it is in their best interest to maximize ad plays. When content is created for audiences with shared characteristics; such as lifestyle, age, interests, or significant life events, advertisements are matched accordingly. The profitability of these advertisements varies across different industries of content.
Advertisements may be charged based on various metrics, including seconds watched, engagements, clicks, and more. According to YouTube’s official website, advertisements can also be sold through a bidding system, where the most statistically relevant product from a company’s product feed is selected for promotion. Additionally, YouTube offers a feature called target frequency, which determines how often an individual user will view an ad within a week. This feature is particularly valuable for firms aiming to boost brand awareness through repeated exposure.
4. Social Media Participants
4.1 Personal Brands
Influencers are individual internet personalities who create content and establish distinct online identities. Brands collaborate with influencers because they have built positive associations and trust with their audiences. According to the Creator Report, as of 2022, there were 207 million content creators worldwide and as of 2023, the value of the influencer market is $21.1 billion. A distinction must be made between micro- and macro-influencers. Micro-influencers generally have follower counts ranging from a few thousand to 100,000. They specialize in producing authentic, niche content. They are often associated with higher engagement rates and more cost-effective partnerships, making them an attractive option for brands seeking long-term relationships with well-defined audience segments. Macro-influencers, with established followings ranging from 100,000 to millions, offer extensive reach and visibility. Their content appeals to mass-market audiences and provides consistent exposure. However, collaborating with macro-influencers is typically more expensive, and they are perceived to be less authentic due to the commercial nature of their endorsements. For brands aiming to achieve broad awareness, macro-influencers are ideal but require careful consideration to maintain credibility and alignment with brand values.
Influencers typically earn income through partial ad revenue from social media platforms, however, 94% of creators earn from brand partnerships, which is their most popular income source. Collaborations with influencers allow brands to reach target audiences quickly and effectively. This approach avoids the need to rely on algorithmic growth, which can take more time. The Digital Marketing Institute states that in 2024, businesses have earned $5.78 return per dollar invested in a partnership with an influencer. Additionally, influencers are trusted by Gen Zers more than celebrities, helping brands appear more relatable and trustworthy. Sponsored content can include product reviews or subtle brand mentions within videos, both of which are proven to be highly effective. Partnerships may also include affiliate links, where influencers earn commissions on sales generated using their unique codes or links. This is best suited for eCommerce-based businesses. Small creators often use branded products as a way to attract attention, such as reviewing the latest smartphone or showcasing a “Shein Haul.” This trend can significantly increase a brand’s reach, specifically if the product has mass-market appeal. Brands can amplify this by using “hype” marketing strategies, such as sending free products to micro-influencers, who may then promote them to their audiences.
User-generated content (UGC) also builds credibility and engagement for brands. This can occur when a product becomes trendy, leading to repeated purchases and reviews. Authenticity, consistency, and a strong reputation are key qualities for selecting influencers. While anyone can become an influencer, brands must exercise caution when choosing collaborators, as these individuals effectively represent the brand. Partnering with the wrong influencer poses risks, as any negative behavior or controversy could harm the brand’s image. For example, Olivia Jade was a popular beauty influencer that partnered with Sephora to make a co-branded product. However, Jade’s parents had bribed the University of Southern California (USC) for guaranteed admissions. This controversy caused Sephora to revoke the partnership to avoid consumer boycotts.
4.2 Business Brands
Business brands leverage social media platforms to achieve a variety of goals, including increasing brand awareness, driving sales, and engaging with customers. Unlike personal brands, business accounts represent companies or organizations and use social media strategically to establish a market presence.
One of the main strategies of business brands is content marketing. This involves creating valuable, shareable content that aligns with the company’s mission and audience interests. For example, a fitness brand may produce workout tips or motivational posts to connect with fitness enthusiasts. Another approach is the use of paid advertisements, which allow businesses to target specific demographics through advanced algorithmic tools available on social media platforms. These ads can be optimized for various objectives, such as website traffic, lead generation, or direct conversions.
Business brands also focus on maintaining a consistent online presence by scheduling regular posts, responding promptly to customer inquiries, and monitoring engagement metrics. By analyzing KPIs such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and customer sentiment, brands can refine their strategies to meet user expectations. Social media platforms provide the opportunity for businesses to engage in direct communication with their audience, fostering loyalty and building trust.
5. The 5 Dimensions of Content Creation
5.1 Purpose & Target Audience
At its core, all media share a fundamental purpose: to tell a story or convey a message. For brands, however, defining a more specific central purpose is crucial. Are you trying to sell a product, promote a cause, generate revenue through an app, secure sponsorship income, boost brand awareness, or achieve a combination of these goals? Broadly, entertainment content can be categorized into humor, education, emotional connection, and promotion purposes. The target audience is closely tied to this purpose, as businesses aim to appeal to specific demographics. Content creators often focus on specific customer segments, which can be categorized by factors like age, interests, lifestyle, or life stage. The content creation market resembles the market for physical goods, with some content types appealing to mass audiences (e.g., relatable content, inspirational stories, cooking) and others targeting niche demographics (e.g., specialized hobbies like pottery or woodworking).
5.2 Retention Strategy
After defining the purpose and audience, another key factor is the strategy for increasing watch time and retention. Watch time is the reward a creator earns in exchange for the value they provide through their content. In short-form videos, this value is subjective, based on the psychological responses of specific audiences, making it difficult to quantify. Unlike physical goods, there are no objective, universal rules for success in video creation, which explains why many businesses struggle to produce consistently viral content.
Tactics for creating viral content include encouraging repeated plays, sharing with friends and family, prompting comments, or driving viewers to explore the description section. Different tactics suit different types of videos. For example, giveaways are effective for increasing product or brand awareness, while relatable, humorous, or controversial topics evoke emotional engagement. Memetic marketing, which uses internet memes or viral cultural references, is another strategy. Duolingo’s use of memes in short-form videos is a successful example. These approaches provide value to users by fostering connections, building positive brand associations, or offering rewards, while simultaneously boosting watch time; a critical metric for algorithm favorability.
5.3 Call-To-Action
For content creators, especially businesses, virality is often a stepping stone to another goal: conversion. After gaining attention through views, shares, and engagement, conversion optimization turns that attention into tangible results like increasing views, purchases, signups, or other business objectives. Effective calls-to-action (CTAs), such as “share,” “comment,” “like,” “tag someone,” or “buy,” are integrated into video descriptions, overlays, or the content itself to feel natural. Additionally, platforms like Facebook Marketplace, TikTok Shop, and Instagram Shopping have integrated e-commerce, allowing creators to directly monetize their virality. By capitalizing on this attention, businesses can create additional revenue opportunities.
5.4 Trend Strategy
Trend analysis uses tools to identify emerging social media trends that creators can leverage. Aligning content with audience preferences often requires understanding these trends, which is where tools like Google Trends, social listening platforms, and in-app analytics become invaluable. Timely adoption of trending themes, hashtags, or formats can enhance a video’s reach within the algorithm.
Trends play a significant role in short-form videos, appearing through trending audio, text, styles, or storytelling elements. Trends can often be planned, for instance, E.L.F. Cosmetics generated the “eyes, lips, face” trend with a catchy song and a competition for unique makeup looks. Similarly, Apple’s “Shot on iPhone” campaign encouraged users to showcase their iPhone’s capabilities, offering rewards like a chance to win the latest device or appear in an ad. Both micro- and macro-influencers, such as celebrities Lizzo and Terry Crews, helped amplify E.L.F.’s trend, driving it to greater popularity. However, many business trends fail, as to some extent, virality and trend generation remains unpredictable.
6. Challenges of Viral Video Creation
Creating viral videos presents several challenges. With the rise of short-form content, attention spans have significantly decreased, making the first few seconds critical for capturing and retaining viewers. Scrolling has become an almost instinctive behavior, and engaging the audience requires two key steps: capturing their focus with a compelling hook, and sustaining their concentration by evoking curiosity about the content. Attention spans have declined dramatically, from 13 seconds in 2000 to just 3–5 seconds by 2017.
This decline is largely due to the “attention economy,” where advertisements and media have commodified attention in ways that foster unhealthy competition for watch time. The oversaturation of content on social media; where barriers to entry are almost nonexistent; further complicates retention efforts. Even low-quality, low-effort videos can circulate widely and occasionally achieve virality through social media algorithms. These short attention spans mean that audiences consume more short-form content overall, distributed across numerous creators. This creates relatively equal opportunities for videos to go viral, as each piece of content has a chance to attract views. To succeed, businesses must continuously test and improve strategies for capturing audience attention, such as following or creating trends, delivering superior value, and setting a clearly defined purpose and target audience.
Authenticity has become one of the most important factors in entertaining content. Businesses often face additional challenges in conveying authenticity, as they are associated with commercial objectives. This makes creating relatable content more difficult, thus many brands will collaborate with influencers to produce viral content on their behalf. Creators and brands risk backlash if they employ misleading or unethical techniques to attract views. In some cases, viral videos may gain popularity by provoking outrage. While this approach can increase views and watch time, it often damages a brand’s reputation; whether personal or commercial; and is ultimately unsustainable in the long term. Businesses must be prepared to address criticism due to misunderstandings or unfavorable audience perceptions; to mitigate negative attention, brands should act quickly by acknowledging issues and addressing misinformation, as well as reinforcing a positive brand image. Taking these steps helps to prevent the spread of false assumptions and maintain audience trust.
7. Visual & Auditory Elements of Short-Form Videos
Psychology is linked to visual and auditory cues, where people are conditioned to associate certain elements with certain concepts and ideas. Every poster, advert, creation, made by a business is made with conscious intentions. Some viral videos have these concepts; although they may not have been conscious of decisions, they also consist of linguistic and visual elements that convey consistent messages to specific audiences, which drives them to become viral. There are patterns, concepts and features in these videos and posts that cater to certain audiences, and convey favorable messages to these audiences, which in turn will encourage longer watch times. Video design is essential; and to master virality, you have to be conscious when utilizing such features rather than posting it and gaining traction due to falsely perceived “luck”.
Every element counts, and what you may have originally thought of as being more likely to go viral; such as high-quality content and using just human voices; is wrong. Rather it is how these visual and auditory elements are applied, and for what purpose. Even cheap production content often goes viral and would be more likely to go viral as it conveys a certain tone. For example, low quality would convey authenticity, which creates a connection. High quality is ideal for educational content as visuals and text are well-researched.
8. The Future of Virality
Interactive tools like augmented reality (AR) filters and virtual reality (VR) experiences can further build audience engagement, and are already in use by platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat. Other AI-powered tools such as trending audio suggestions, fast editing presets, transcripts and AI video and music production have simplified the production of quality short-form videos. Users can now generate AI images and videos at low costs, creating accurate and entertaining content that was never filmed or drawn, and in the future, this can evolve to be used in advertising videos or films and series.
For businesses, AI can aid in identifying viral trends such as through analyzing audience behavior, tracking patterns, and finding trending keywords. For businesses and influencers, using these AI-generated recommendations optimizes content relevancy and maximizes the chances of gaining visibility. Social media algorithms constantly recognize and cycle through trending videos and audio. Another valuable AI tool for businesses is Neuromarketing, which focuses on analyzing the emotional and cognitive responses of customers for marketing. Businesses can design content to evoke targeted emotional stimulations, which are arguably the most important factor in achieving virality.
9. Conclusion
To summarize, for content to go viral it must evoke emotions from the audience, which leads to engagement and better algorithm-driven KPIs. For businesses, defining the purpose of their content and understanding their target demographic are essential steps in crafting impactful campaigns. By considering the perspective of their ideal consumer, businesses can make content that fulfills more specific needs. This consumer-focused approach ensures that the content resonates deeply with viewers, driving not just viewership but meaningful actions such as sharing, commenting, or purchasing. Successful campaigns strike a balance between emotional appeal and strategic messaging. In a competitive digital landscape, business and influencer collaborations have become more important. Businesses must establish the 5 dimensions of content creation; namely, purpose, target audience, retention strategy, call-to-action, and trend strategy. Social media is the future of marketing, and we can conclude that viral videos are not always based on “luck”, but can be achieved through deliberate, strategic design choices of content.