The Accidental Viral Marketing Campaign

Photo Courtesy of Emo Innovations

Sometimes, it pays to become one of the first people to write a post or blog about a big announcement on your website or blog and share it to social media. I experienced it first hand several times before during a campaign for a television series way back in 2009 on my personal blog and many times after that in our movie news website. A few days ago, it happened again and the number of views for that particular post in our movie website really went crazy and still getting views until now.

MovieNews.Me is just one of our blogs out there dedicated for all-movie entertainment. Any news or press releases that we gather from different sources related to movies are being collated and made into news articles or blogs and post them on our website. Some of the things that I learned from studying the flow, techniques, and tips and tricks of blogging and social media are being used by our team in our movie news website. And one of the tips that we learned is that to become aware of when will a big announcement come and be the first one, if not, among one of the first people to blog about it.

The Accidental Campaign

When the announcement for the movie adaptation for the best-selling young adult novel "Fallen" was released a few days ago, our movie news website is one of the first websites to post this announcement. A few minutes after it was published online, we immediately post it in social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter. The posting actually was just an ordinary posting of article, until a sudden increase of pageviews, likes, shares, and retweets from both Facebook and Twitter did their jobs so well, the ordinary posting became an accidental campaign and a viral announcement campaign. Just take a look at our records below:

And it's just day one! As of this writing, the blog post announcement still getting pageviews from different parts around the world.

Why it became viral?

The accidental campaign for the "Fallen" movie adaptation post has become viral because the young adult novel itself has book reader fans all over the world. Maybe, just maybe, they got excited with the announcement when it was posted on Twitter and Facebook and communities from different fans shared, loved, and retweet the post link until it reaches their far-most members.

In a viral campaign, it really helps that a particular product or book or people has fans and followers to make the social media campaign very effective. In this case, even though the viral campaign was just accidental, we can be sure that the pageviews are all original or organic, meaning, the pageviews and link visits were not paid. Coming from this, we can all say that the campaign is effective.


So, the next time your company needs a viral marketing campaign, either online or on-site marketing, make sure that the campaign you are going to make are effective enough or at least move people in whatever means possible. Feel free to use the Internet as a source for ideas in doing your campaign strategy to become effective. Sometimes, the most stupid idea also works. You just have to figure out which will come out according to plans.