In the past, consumers were force fed advertisements with few ways to distinguish what worked and what didn’t in the short term. Now, social media allows a marketer the chance to see how successful their ad is within hours of their first posting. Shares, retweets, likes and generated buzz are now just as important as views, and a campaign can be broken if it cannot stimulate enough of these social media impressions. Linking back to the first factor, you must create something that is both exciting and noteworthy in order to convince consumers that your ad is worthy of sharing and spreading across the internet. Social media can provide a cheap way to spread your messages, but they need to be strong and worthy of …show more content…
I have never, and have no intention to ever, spread a brand message on social media if it does not involve something that I am physically doing. A strong example of this is the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, which incorporated an element that made sharing of your own videos an imperative part of the campaign. Without a factor that includes me personally, I am never going to feel comfortable bothering my friends and family by spreading a viral marketing campaign. I thoroughly enjoyed the Volvo and WestJet videos, yet I felt no desire to share them despite their immense quality. Many people within my generation have similar feelings towards their personal laws of social media sharing, which makes viral marketing particularly challenging. Certain social media platforms, such as Snapchat and Twitter, are more accepted as sharing devices, and should be more heavily favored when attempting to start a viral