Down The Hobbit Hole – A Viral Media Adventure

Outbox4 has created a 10 step guide on how to make viral media. This is a popular challenge in the web world and can be quite daunting but sometimes it can happen unintentionally.

We have used an example from one of our clients The Highlife Treehouse Company. When they began creating Treehouses back in 2003 there was a buzz around this company as having a treehouse in your backgarden is every little boy’s dream, but these treehouses were different. First of all, they are massive. Some can be larger than the house that sits nestled beside them with 3 to 4 bedrooms, several floors and majestic turrets. Second of all they are precisely designed by experienced designers and architects. They are built using high quality timber and the finished product can look as though it has been lifted straight from a fairytale, and fairytale is exactly the theme of this article.

The Hobbit has been a popular novel for many years, a childhood favourite as it were. But now The Hobbit will be released in cinemas as of the 14th of December. Highlife treehouses have made Hobbit hole replicas for peoples homes for many years now, ever since the release of the highly popular Lord of The Rings films back in 2001. They began recently to post pictures of thier hobbit holes on their website and also on various social media sites such as Facebook and Pinterest. As you can imagine there will be plenty of people searching for hobbit holes all over the world (for various reasons) and since Highlife Treehouses had created Hobbit Holes them traffic to the source of the image would surge.

Outbox4 have created a 10 step process of how this has managed to go go viral. This is a good illustration of how you would be able to make your own website, picture or video do the same.

1) The Hobbit Movie is announced, opening in cinemas on December 14th 2012.

2) Highlife Treehouses have been making Hobbit Holes for many years now.

3) Highlife Treehouses post pictures and information of their Hobbit holes on their website, Pinterest board, Twitter and   Facebook.

4) As The Hobbit movie is now a part popular social culture and a highly anticipated film. People now begin searching for Hobbit related media such as Hobbits / Gandalf / Hobbit Holes / The Shire.

5) Google begins ranking the most relevant material relating to the search term Hobbit Holes. Url’s from their website, their Pinterest account and other social media sites appear high in search results.

6)As the quality of the product is exactly what people are looking for then they click through.

7) People land on either the website, Pinterest board, Twitter page or Facebook page, depending on where the media originates from.

8) People begin to share the website page, re-pin the images of the Hobbit Hole, Re-Tweet the images of the Hobbit Hole etc on their pages. This is then viewed by their followers or friends who share this on their page and so forth.

9) Google logs visits, clicks and sources for website analytics. Website hits surge and are the highest they have been for a while.

10) Congratulations! Your Hobbit Hole post has went viral.