A Viral Post: How Does This Happen?

August 1, 2013 - David Hall
Category: Social Media Marketing

Part of my job as a social media manager is posting dentistry-related content for our clients on their Facebook pages. I am always on the lookout for cute, relevant, interesting, and funny images that relate to anything in the dentistry field because as we all know by now, a picture is worth a thousand words. I came across the following image, courtesy of eHarmony, and thought it was too great not to share:

So I decided to post the image on two of the pages I manage. Both of these pages are for very well-respected and well-known cosmetic dentists who are among the best in their field. They both have the same kind of upper-middle class audience of mostly women interested in cosmetic procedures. They are even in the same general area of the country! I posted the photo at almost the same time on the same day but look at this difference:

One like, woohoo. However, on this page……

The difference is astounding! The kicker is, the page related to the first picture has three times the number of likes than the one that went viral. 408 shares! Who are these people and how do I leverage this exposure to the page? It just goes to show that you can never really guess what an audience is going to respond to. You can try your best, but you will never know for sure until you try everything.