We recently ran a story about how brands can increase their odds of creating viral content; it’s a great story. It’s so great that it got me to thinking: how are the tips in that story different from the tips I might offer to consumers trying to make viral content of their own? Well, let’s see…

First, What is Viral Content?

Have you ever wondered what it takes to generate a viral piece of content? And no, I don’t mean something that’s medically contagious…

I’m talking about that one video which gets played by everyone in the office, or at least by that one hipster who knows every viral video ever created.

Well, there isn’t exactly one formula that will get you there, but the following five tips to viral content could help you get started!

5 Consumer Tips for Increasing Odds of Creating Viral Content

Consumer Viral Content Tip #1 – Create the Right Content

If you look at the various popular videos and images on the web, you’ll notice that some of the most famous pieces of content revolve around a few topics: kids, talent, pets, crazy, offensive, and of course, adult. Does this mean you’re stuck with making a video of a cute child/baby or cat/dog?

Of course not! You have many options. Let’s break down the basics: If it’s cute, then you have to take a picture or video of it immediately. The same goes for funny. If you can get cute and funny together, you might hit the jackpot.

The easy part about generating cute content is that if you have a cute kid or pet, cuteness will always be there for content creation…just ask Maru:

Funny content, on the other hand, seems to be more spontaneous, and is usually turned into content accidentally. Unless you’re a natural comedian or an actor, you might want to skip this one.

The plan for most teenagers seems to be: “Is this cool? Do I look cool? Then I need to take a picture ASAP!” Ah yes, the “selfie” is born:

Does this tip work for both consumers and brands? More or less – YES! Just like a consumer, a brand needs to think about their audience. Brands think about what types of content their consumers will find interesting and incorporate similar themes.

Consumer Viral Content Tip #2 – Choose the Right Device for Creating Content

Back in the day before modern technology, if you wanted real content, you had to hire a portrait painter and sit for a while as they painted. And, sharing content was limited to parties where you hung your piece of content on some wall and talked about it.

Now, with technology, you’ve got random painted fingernails visible to everyone in the world, with comments, and maybe even product tie-ins ( see Sephora Beauty Board, powered by Thismoment Content Cloud). Any smartphone capable of taking an image can create content.

As long as you can capture a moment in time with a device, then that device works for content generation. Any device that can record an image, video or sound will work for creating content. Most devices are optimized to make the creation of internet-friendly content easy. What changes between the devices is usually the quality of the capturing and storing technology and how the device transfers the content to other places.

Does this tip work for brands? Yes, absolutely. Now, more than ever, brands are creating content using the same devices consumers do. There was a time when a brand needed to spend thousands of dollars to create a video. These days, we see them creating content through the same means as you or I would. At times, more professional equipment is needed; most brands learn to know the difference and create accordingly.

Consumer Viral Content Tip #3 – Choose Where to Upload Your Content

Now that you have content, you need to make it publicly available, or in other words, put it on the Internet for others to find. Social networks are usually a great start. The amount of sharing and re-sharing that goes on inside of these interactive networks is insane. Yes, you can just make a website for yourself these days and host your pictures and video there… but seriously, who does that? You need to alert every single person you know about your fresh new content, and it has to make a lasting impression! Again, social networks are pretty much built for this nowadays. Go ahead and join Facebook, or Youtube, or Instagram, or Twitter, or Ello or…

MySpace, anyone?

Anyone?

…and upload as much content as humanly possible. This is where it will be scraped, tagged, #hashtagged, mentioned, and pretty much hooked into the matrix of web content, ready to be found by anyone, and anything. That, or you can wait around for Google to index your website. It shouldn’t take too long… hang in there.

Does this tip work for brands? Yes; today more than ever. The list of places a brand can distribute content is long and expanding every day. As that lists grows, brands will need to get better and better about deciding where each piece of content will perform best.

Consumer Viral Content Tip #4 – Choose Promotion Strategy

Ok, so you’ve created, captured, and uploaded your content to social media. What do you do now? Here’s one idea: Throw an amazing party in a mystery town centered on your content.

Oh, you don’t have millions of dollars? Maybe you can blog about it? Tell some friends, write some emails or hire a promoter. There are no shortcuts with promoting your content, unless you either have the advertising capital or your content is seriously, seriously viral. In which case, it will promote itself once it hits social media.

Also, make it a point to read and re-read this great article on promoting your content by KISSMetrics.

Does this tip work for brands? Yes. These days the “post it and they will come” strategy simply doesn’t work. Just like consumers, brands need to carefully strategize how they will drive traffic to their content.

Consumer Viral Content Tip #5 – With a Little Luck, Go Viral

So you’ve promoted the heck out of your content and your potato is ready to go viral.

Ok…a viral potato kind of sounds gross, and unfortunately, there is not much extra you can do at this point unless your content is actually viral-worthy. I could add tons of links to advice found all over the internet on the subject (like this article from the Huffington Post), but the best advice is to not get carried away trying to force your content into something it’s not. Just have fun creating, sharing, tweeting, tagging, putting it on social media and content clouds, and the rest is up to the general public.

Does this tip work for brands? Yes. Just like you, brands need a little luck in order for their content to “go viral.” Since there’s no way to generate luck, I suggest rubbing a rabbit’s foot, crossing your fingers, saying a little prayer, or simply thinking positive thoughts. Who knows, it could work.

So there you have it! 5 tips for consumers, and as you can see, all of them are also relevant for brands. Viral content is viral content, no matter who’s creating it!

The post Consumer vs. Branded Viral Content, Is there a Difference? appeared first on Thismoment Content Marketing Blog.

Without question, the web is now buzzing about what web cards, (a la Google Now), bring to the table, but the idea of content-rich “cards” has been around for a long time. Let’s take a look at how collectible card games can offer insight into this burgeoning UX metaphor.

There is a specific market out there with millions of users that have been addicted to the concept of cards for decades, and that market has little to do with the internet. Welcome to the world of collectible card games. A world in which players obsess over cards and their design, and use these cards daily as a form of constant engagement.

Of course, first comparisons between analog and digital content cards seem abstract and far-fetched; however, upon a further examination, it’s quite startling how similar the cards of the web are to those of collectible card games.

Creating (Digital) Decks of Cards

Imagine you take your phone out of your pocket and start flipping through some web cards you’ve collected, perhaps using a single aggregator app. This is not much different than the analog concept of shuffling through your hand in a card game in search of the perfect card to put into play.

As long as those people have a card deck, they will eventually interact with it. So how do you deliver a deck of digital cards that entices a user to engage with it?

Analog card players collect such cards through various means (gifts, trades/swaps, specialty purchases, card pack purchases, etc.). Similarly, the digital card user can also collect cards through various digital sources. In both worlds, once the cards are yours, you can mix them up, sort them, and arrange them any which way you like to suit your needs. Each card has its own purpose, and each card can be picked up or discarded easily. And that feeling of deploying the perfect combination of cards can be priceless.

You have to allow a user to carry their decks of cards across different mediums and ensure the cards function correctly. This kind of card deck is worth keeping.

Powerfully Simple Design

The power of the card’s design lies in its simplicity. It has the ability to convey a great deal of information at a glance, and offers even finer detail upon deeper interaction.

When you look at a card from a collectible card game, you will most likely first notice the card’s image. The image is the main attention grabber and is the focal point of the card.

The more interesting the image is, the more you forget that you are looking at a rectangular card. The card becomes an experience based on a centrally placed image, accessorized with details in the form of interactive data all around the image, to be explored only if your attention to the card increases.

If you already know what the card is about, you might only look at the image and move on. This kind of shallow experience is important for users who don’t want to invest too much time into one card and would rather browse the other cards. Or perhaps you are so familiar with the card that the image is all you need to process its information and carry on with other tasks.

Digital cards should also be designed with simplicity in mind.

Relevant Grouping

Looking further into the design of collectible cards, we see that they are usually organized into familiar groups which makes it easier for players to learn what they are used for.

This is represented visually through different background colors and themes, which can set the tone of the card quickly. The small icons found in various layouts on the cards, are usually not only cool looking, but allow users to understand the underlying content and make faster decisions when they are needed. The icons themselves can be interactive and play important roles and functions in the cards, often making the card a little more special to the user who is counting on these interactions.

Of course, there is usually one small representation of data that can be crucial for making fast but educated decisions. This can be found in the top corner of the cards, a place visible on every card even when they are stacked on top of each other.

This powerful and precise piece of information can come in many forms: a number, a rating, a price. This data point can be crucial in making important decisions quickly, especially when you have a “hand” of cards to compare.

The best part is that this grouping metaphor translates directly to digital cards!

Rich Content Is Key

And now we come to the most involved part of the card: the information written in text. This can take the form of descriptive titles framed in their own containers, or full on descriptions which are brief and to the point.

In card games, the main card description is the real heart of the card experience because it describes the underlying functionality. The description will answer your questions about the card, help you formulate opinions on how to use the card, and will serve as the source of further actions taken with the card.

This translates to the web card UI world quite simply: the card’s description is where links live; is where flight times are listed; is where an amazing comment is displayed; is where your photo captured a moment in time. The card’s description is where your rich content lives, accessible at anytime from the convenience of your pocket.

Why is this important?

We all grew up with cards. Whether it was collectible card games or just normal playing cards, most of us have experienced fun moments playing with them. For the collectors, it started with the excited feeling of getting new cards, and unwrapping them to play with them for the first time. If you got a rare card or one that you paid for, it felt special because it was harder to obtain and you knew that it would be very useful.

When interacting with the cards, you would completely focus on a card, and each card would tell you a different story.The best part was that the cards could be used to interact with others, creating a truly involving experience. We can draw from every one of these great aspects of playing with non-digital cards and apply them to web cards.

The limitless flexibility in mixing and matching web cards combined with the rich content available in the card format gives us unprecedented control over the information that governs our daily life. With web cards, we can track our packages, schedule flights, share photos and videos, and even make dinner reservations all in one customizable experience right at our fingertips. But all of this functionality already existed on the internet before web cards came along. What web cards changed is how we experience and aggregate our web content. They have turned your web experience into a deck of playing cards, and they are waiting for you to play with them.

The post For The Future of Digital Cards, Look To The Past appeared first on Thismoment Content Marketing Blog.

With the likes of Facebook and Twitter now using cards as the primary way to display content, it is time to reevaluate how we interact with the web. Interactive digital cards not only display information to the user, but also entice the user to play with them. The depth of the card format allows users to get caught up in a moment of exploration; it attracts their attention and holds it in an already familiar card template while playing with the accessories of its content.

By using cards in web design, you can easily add interactive elements to your website. The capabilities of these cards range from: adding comments that appear below an image, sharing or voting on the content with quick finger taps or clicks, watching a video or an interactive slideshow, and even playing a game right on the card. The familiarity of the card container format not only guides users in their exploratory experience, it keeps them engaged. There really is no limit to what you can place in a card for users to play with. You only need to have the right content management tools to support building such cards that gives you the most room to be creative while keeping a familiar card experience for the user.

Here at Thismoment, we are developing Content Cloud—an environment that will let you not only take all of your content and display it in card templates, but also allow you to use custom applications inside the cards themselves. You can build your own custom card apps or download them from a store, and then drop them right into your content environment with ease using our extensive APIs. In our platform, developers can choose whether they want to use already built card templates or create a new card to display content in an entirely new way. This allows you to put the power of card interaction right into your users’ hands, custom tailored for your brand’s desired experience, while adhering to our powerful card platform. As a result, these interactive card applications will help drive more customer interest from interested to buying, especially when it comes to content associated with a product.

Content Cloud, is a powerful stepping stone to such an environment. It not only gives you industry-grade card content management features, but it can also pave the way for creating more advanced interactive card experiences in the future. Its innovative card content approach, coupled with a sturdy platform that has been supporting top brands for years, make it a great asset for all brands. The digital card experience is not exclusively for the Facebooks and the Twitters of the world anymore. Content Cloud makes it easy to gather any and all content relevant to your brand and bring it to your audience in the form of content playlists. Digital cards are a powerful tool which allow you to share any content anywhere, but this is only the beginning.

In the future, cards will be more engaging, more interactive and more meaningful to the end user. Card interactions will include new, novel ways for users to interact with them such as having the ability to flip cards visually and reveal additional content. Card templates could be designed with custom card widgets, customizable by the website admins on the fly. Live updating components on the cards—such as streaming conversations, tickers and notifications—will really bring the cards to life. The future of interactive cards is awesome. With the ease of creation and scalability of cards, and the possibility for deeper engagement, cards are on track to become the standard for delivering online content.

The post Playing with Cards: The New User Experience appeared first on Thismoment Content Marketing Blog.

It’s a new year and that usually means it’s time to bat around predictions for the coming year. So, I’d like to add one prediction for the future of digital technology in 2014. In short, “cards” are the future.

I stumbled on Paul Adam’s blog post about digital content cards and completely agree that cards are the future. Why? Well, these cards will help marketers tell stories in new and exciting ways – they’re interactive, collectible, stackable, bite-sized pieces of rich content with endless possibilities. Here are some thoughts on this hot new UX paradigm, and how it will change the way people consume content online.

Cards deliver concise bursts of information. They give marketers a great way to “tell quick stories”, but the main idea here is having individual pieces of content aggregated into a consistent experience. Similar to the way paragraphs group sentences into distinct sections, cards can gather various pieces of information to form one coherent piece of content.

Your stock portfolio could be represented with a group of cards – each card outlining the vital financial info for a single ticker symbol. Your travel plans could be a group of cards that deliver information about travel, lodging, weather and entertainment options. Or, you could create a collection of cards to represent all the gifts in your wedding registry. The use cases are endless.

Everybody is moving towards this new design concept, including Google, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc…

Cards are interactive. Cards are nothing new in terms of UX design. It’s actually the way they function that is important for responsive web pages – digital cards can be manipulated in all sorts of ways. Just like physical cards, they can be turned over to reveal more information, folded for a summary and expanded for more details, stacked to save space, sorted, grouped, and spread out to survey more than one.

With today’s web technologies, it’s easy to take advantage of animation and movement to make them interactive and immersive. They can be filled with multimedia content, photos, videos, music, and shared across the web. They are the new creative canvas, and everyone is moving towards displaying content using cards.

It’s all about being responsive. On mobile devices, these cards can be stacked vertically, as you’d see in your friends’ Facebook timeline or Twitter page. They can also be stacked horizontally, adding a column as a tablet is turned sideways. They are also perfect for responsive rules since they can just be windows of variable size rendered in variable positions. They can be used as canvases reconfigurable by both website developer and website user.

With more and more users accessing social media and consuming digital content on their mobile devices, it’s important to ensure that the content is delivered in a way that’s engaging, clear and optimized for all the various mobile device screen sizes out there. Cards meet all those needs, and that’s why they are the future.

Cards will change the way marketers deliver content to fans, and in turn, will change the way fans interact with brands and branded content. Understanding the way people consume card-based content today gives you a big head start on how to use cards in a future digital campaign.

Keep an eye on this blog for my followup post on cards. You can also find more of my musings on web development in my personal blog: http://risebird.tumblr.com/

The post Cards Are The Future (Of Digital Marketing) appeared first on Thismoment Content Marketing Blog.