They just want to share it.’” I’m the first to argue that there is no formula to creating viral social media content. They wanted to share something that expressed how they felt, but they didn’t particularly want to share something about what had happened. They wanted to share something that expressed the emotion. They’ve summed it up, so I don’t need to.’” Plus, there’s an immediateness about an image — particularly in the rapid-fire world of social media — that can express complex emotions and ideas while being extremely shareable. Plus, not everyone responded to the image in the same way. However, regularly reposting the same thing over and over in the hope of kick-starting a snowball of engagement can look desperate, if not a bit spammy. Yet Chris had unwittingly created a content series as he began posting updated versions following each new celebrity death. It’s also hard to say how many people saw or interacted with the image, with so many people sharing and reposting so many versions across so many channels. #RIPCarrieFisher #sgtpepper2016 May the force be with 2017. pic.twitter.com/3HJM8mJPVQ — christhebarker (@christhebarker) December 27, 2016 “When Carrie Fisher died, I remember tweeting, ‘Is this actually happening?’ I honestly thought the queen was going to die. She just mouthed, ‘George Michael’s died.’ My mother said, ‘Oh, for ****’s sake.’” Lesson: Social media audiences quickly take your content into their own hands if you don’t respond or adapt quickly enough.
Graphic designer Chris Barker has twice won cover of the year at the British Society of Magazine Editors and recently won art director of the year. Yet he is probably best-known for an image he created for his own amusement at 2 a.m. one Nov. 9 while watching the rolling U.S. election coverage.
For Chris, the election result was more evidence that, in his words, things were going “a bit 2016.”
“I started thinking about the year as a whole and how unusual it had been,” he tells me. “At the time, it seemed like a big monumental shift. (Rank outsiders) Leicester City were running away with the English Premier League (football championship). Brexit had happened. I thought I needed to get my thoughts down on paper. It was a cathartic thing, really. It was for me. It wasn’t with any kind of shareability in mind.”
Being a graphic designer, Chris’ main tool of expression is Adobe Photoshop. By 3 a.m., he had finished the image and posted it on digital arts community B3ta as well as Twitter. He also uploaded it to Facebook as his profile image. “The response to it was surprisingly instant. There was an immediate flurry of “likes” and shares,” he says.
Chris’ cathartic “photoshoppery” resulted in an image eventually seen by millions of people around the world — an homage to the cover of the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, reinvented as a collage of the many celebrity deaths and other events that made an impact on him throughout the year.
Seems as good a time as any to post this. #sgtpepper2017 pic.twitter.com/piWGmUiZwk
— christhebarker (@christhebarker) November 6, 2017
But on that cold November morning in 2016 Chris was taken aback by the response. Within hours even his profile image was attracting a huge number of “likes” and shares. “I remember chatting to Rob Manuel of B3ta about it, saying, ‘Why are they sharing my profile picture? What’s going on?’ He said, ‘They like it and they want other people to know that they’ve seen it. They don’t care if it’s your personal image. They just want to share it.’”
I’m the first to argue that there is no formula to creating viral social media content. However, we can draw some lessons from Chris’ hugely successful image — and how he followed it up.
I read the news today, oh boy
Chris believes his image worked primarily on an emotional level, tapping into how many people felt about 2016. As he explains, “People were feeling slightly fragile and confused. They wanted to share something that expressed how they felt, but they didn’t particularly want to share something about what had happened. They wanted to share something that expressed the emotion.
“It’s like saying, ‘This badge represents how I feel about this situation. They’ve summed it up, so I don’t need to.’”
Plus, there’s an immediateness about an image — particularly in the rapid-fire world of social media — that can express complex emotions and ideas while being extremely shareable. “Once you’ve seen an image, you can’t unsee it. They’re so instant and they’re so memorable,” Chris says. “They linger a lot more than a great writer writing a fantastic think piece about the event.”
Lesson: Social media and visual content can help people express complex ideas or emotions in a concise, relatable, and shareable way.
We can work it out
Chris’ image isn’t only packed with emotion. Having captured attention, it rewards closer scrutiny. It is the ultimate Where’s Waldo, inviting people to seek and identify the various faces, with that little kick of satisfaction every time a piece of the puzzle is solved.
This deeper engagement with the image also fostered more interaction around it. If one person pleaded with Twitter to identify the bloke over Muhammad Ali’s left shoulder, someone else might respond with the answer. (It’s Frank Kelly, who played Father Jack Hackett in the British sitcom Father Ted.)
Lesson: Instead of treating your followers as passive consumers, use your content to invite more interaction or foster a more communal experience.
Send me a postcard, drop me a line
As more famous people died in the weeks that followed, Chris was inundated with requests for additions…
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