Viral Strategy
Content:
The Berger and Milkman article concluded that positive or surprising material is most likely to go viral. Based on this information, I decided to write my article about a topic everyone has a stake in and make it shocking. I went to Dan Gilbert’s speech about happiness a couple months ago and what he said really stuck with me. The conclusions he drew, especially about the effect of children on happiness were thought-provoking and very unexpected. In addition, the room where the lecture was held was bursting with people, all wanting to learn about happiness. As evident by this, happiness is a topic that applies to everyone and it is particularly interesting when people like Dan Gilbert try to quantify it. The topic of this piece will, I hope, draw people in and the unexpected conclusions it contains will prompt people to pass it along to their friends
Display:
After much debate, I decided to write an article instead of creating an infographic because the information I wanted to include is more interesting when fully explained by writing. However, I tried to add some infographic-like elements into my article. Similar to an infographic, I wanted the article to be a visual experience where the reader feels like they are absorbing the information rather than reading it. Therefore, I tried to display the information so that it flows down the page, bringing the viewer along with it. Further, I tried to incorporate the suggestions made in the smashing magazine article about good design into the images shown in the article. I did have some chart-like elements, but I tried to make them informative yet still simplistic and attractive rather than burdensome and overly quantitative.
