Viral newsbreaks help to achieve different KPIs: increase awareness, engagement, and audience loyalty, as well as increase sales if the project is tied to a specific product. At the same time, a viral campaign is often cheaper than a reputational or advertising one. Some people are mistakenly convinced that "viruses" cannot be planned: multi-million coverage and high citation rates are a coincidence or a one-time luck. Others believe that such initiatives are not justified because they do not help to achieve strategic goals.

"Life-Giving Virus": How to Achieve Strategic KPIs with the Help of Viral Newsbreaks
Viral newsbreaks scatter across social networks, generating hundreds of thousands of likes, reposts, comments and marks. This is how brands increase company awareness, reach, and audience engagement. Nevertheless, viral content can become part of a broader, integrated information campaign, in which the brand seeks not only to go viral on social networks, but also to achieve reputational goals.

improving business performance (30%);
increasing audience reach (19%);
increase in the citation index (14%);
increasing the number of publications in the media (11%).
These goals can be achieved by integrating a viral news hook into the overall PR campaign. For example, the famous Ice Bucket Challenge began its journey on social networks. The challenge went viral after celebrities began to take part in it. They not only doused themselves with cold water, but also donated money to charity.

As a result, the campaign raised awareness of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and raised $220 million to fund disease research foundations. The Ice Bucket Challenge also received a lot of publicity in the media, which wrote which celebrities had already joined the challenge (or, conversely, refused it), as well as talked about unusual ways to participate in it.

A viral news hook is often easier to feed into publications. Firstly, journalists are already aware of the high competition from social networks and bloggers for the attention of the audience. According to Cision, almost one in five specialists considers the growing popularity of social networks and the dominance of influencers over traditional media to be a key challenge in journalism over the past year.

Secondly, it is important for the media to remain a reliable information source for their target audience, so ignoring viral newsbreaks can negatively affect audience loyalty. Viral campaigns resonate with many users, which means that they fall into the range of interests or current pains of the target audience. Picking up the trend, the media maintains contact with the audience.

For brands, this is an opportunity to break into the editorial offices of leading publications, which in normal times may not even consider the proposed pitch. At the same time, you can offer, if not the most attractive newsbreaks, but those that are important to talk about as part of a reputation strategy: for example, technological updates, charity events or eco-initiatives.

How to create viral content?
Creating content with high engagement online is one of the top challenges for the industry, according to a survey by HubSpot. Many people believe that virality is a matter of luck. However, if you analyze viral materials, you can find the characteristics that unite them. This means that "viruses" can be planned. However, it is impossible to predict the exact coverage or engagement metrics: shares, likes, comments, citations in the media, and more.

Here are five key attributes of a viral newsbreak and related content:

He responds emotionally. Content that evokes strong emotions, whether it is fear, surprise, or inspiration, is more likely to go viral compared to a neutral newsbreak. An emotional connection with the audience brings the user closer and pushes them to share materials.
Visually appealing. Vibrant visuals such as high-quality images, infographics, and videos help you stand out in an information-rich media landscape.
It has practical value. Tips, guides, or life hacks are likely to spread faster as people tend to share content that may be useful to others.
Increases the social significance of the sharer. People love to share content that will improve their online image. If followers find the post funny, interesting, or informative, they will associate the same association with the person who published it. This is how people build their online persona and reputation.
It conveys a new, but simple message. A new look at a popular topic or previously unpublished details challenge conventional wisdom. Such content stands out and can become popular. The technique should be used carefully so as not to run into negativity.
You can also create virality using different techniques:

Increase engagement. Interactive content such as polls, quizzes, challenges, or storytelling attracts more attention because the user interacts with the material personally (by participating in surveys) or emotionally (by reading the hero's story). Newsjacking and trend integration. Current memes, moods, and messages allow you to create situational viral content — the main thing is to release it on time. For example, last year, which was held under the auspices of AI, Yandex trained a neural network to decipher documents with pre-revolutionary spelling and told RIA Novosti about it. The newsbreak was published in five more publications, and the total coverage exceeded 4 million

Viral content to solve reputational and PR problems
Virality opens the way to the media even for young and little-known brands. If a company was able to launch a "virus", it will be instantly noticed. After that, the business is likely to be in the news, and the director may receive an offer to leave a comment on a particular issue or even an invitation to an interview. This is an opportunity to increase awareness, attract new customers and, most importantly, voice important messages within the PR strategy: plans for the development of the company or product, updates, achievements, key benefits - in short, almost any message.

That's exactly what happened to Oreo: during a sharp power outage at the 2013 Super Bowl, the manufacturer quickly reacted by tweeting an image with the text "No light? Not a problem. You can still dunk in the dark." No problem. You can still dunk in the dark). The brand meant that Super Bowl viewers can dip cookies in milk (this is the most popular way to consume) even without light. A witty and timely tweet went viral:

about 15 thousand shares and 20 thousand likes on Facebook on the first day;
the growth of subscribers in X by 8 thousand people, and in Instagram — by 34 thousand;
16 thousand similar images uploaded by users to Instagram.
In addition to the multi-million coverage, the situation was also publicized in the media. For example, news aggregator The Huffington Post described the tweet as "one of the most talked about ads, even without commercial overtones." Although the direct impact on sales remained unclear, the success on social media provided the brand with significant media attention: the tweet is still being written about.

To summarize
A viral newsbreak opens the way to the media even for little-known brands: journalists take comments from founders or top managers, cover a trend, company and product, or talk about marketing success. In this way, a business can broadcast messages that are important within the PR campaign to the media and solve broader reputational problems: for example, to raise awareness among the audience.

Viral content can be scheduled. It is important to think over the strategy and stick to it. While exact reach and engagement cannot be predicted, viral campaigns become the foundation for large views in the future. As a rule, social media algorithms are better at promoting the content of accounts that make regular posts on the same topic.