The New Ways of Getting Attention
Okay, let’s talk about the viral content strategy for 2025. Everybody wants their content to go viral, but the real question is how? What works now? The whole latter-day experiential model has been changed.
At Aella Creative Force, we have observed brands going viral overnight, yet somehow, others simply vanish from the social scene. We, therefore, know what works (and doesn’t work!) Although we could have kept this knowledge to ourselves, we’re spilling all the juicy secret tips about what makes content go viral in 2025.
The Big Shift in Viral Content Strategy 2025: It’s No Longer About Going BIG!
Here’s what’s changed everything: brands will now chase smaller-scale, audience-based virality and achieve better performance. You do NOT need to reach 50 million views to succeed, you need to reach the RIGHT people who are then willing to share your content.
To put it simply, would you rather have 1,000,000 random people see your content, or 10,000 people who are nuts for your brand and want to buy your products? We thought so!
What Makes Content Go Viral These Days
Emotion is everything: Marketing content that generates an emotion (either positive or negative) has a greater chance of becoming viral, but here’s where everyone goes wrong: it’s not just about making people happy. The pieces of content that go “viral” make people feel something so important that they have to share it.
We mean:
- Content that makes you say, “OMG, my friend NEEDS to see this”
- Posts that make you so mad you need to screenshot and share with your group chat
- Relatable videos that make you feel personally attacked
- Stories that make you ugly cry, but in a good way
Snap videos are still the king: Despite all of these tenets on what makes viral content, short-form video will be the dominant content type of 2025. With TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and Facebook Reels being dominant, the time frames for these platforms are continuing to escalate. It’s no longer just short-form; we’re nowhere close to even determining viral trends based on how audiences remix, recreate, or propose content.
Your video must be so good that the viewer has the desire to make their own version. Think of dance challenges, before and after reveals, or Get Ready With Me, that make you want to copy.
The New Viral Recipe That’s Actually Working
Step 1: Understand Your Internet Culture
Almost all (98%) social media users agree that if it is a social piece of content, it must reflect culture and trends online. Be advised that just producing content is not enough – you must understand internet fluency too.
What’s trending right now:
- Using trending sounds and music
- Doing memes while they are still cool
- Knowing what the different gate-keeping communities are saying
- Knowing the language of your audience
Step 2: Make it interactive
The content that is going the fastest makes people want to DO! Not just look at, not just like – but physically do! Examples that are going successfully:
“Tell me you’re a [blank] without telling me you’re a [blank]”
“POV: You’re trying to explain [relatable situation]”
Before & after transformation videos
“A day in my life as a [profession]” content
Step 3: Be mindful of timing
27% of social marketers say they usually adapt their content strategy and take advantage of conversations or trending topics. When brands go viral, they’re not considering every trend… they are picking the right moments and making the right jumps.
The Platforms Where It All Happens
TikTok: The trend industry
The majority of viral trends you see come from TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube shorts. A good deal of that content has been produced by influencers and AI (again, very much the AI, which seems to be the overall consensus). The trends begin on TikTok. You can always repackage trend content from another platform; however, I would still recommend you move quickly, as in what spans the other various platforms, you might be too late.
Instagram: The pretty version
You can make TikTok trends a pretty/ polished version of that content (say, the way brands take trending, viral concepts and make them fancy) on Instagram reels.
YouTube Shorts: The deep dive
The Deep Dive YouTube Shorts work exactly as the title implies, usually in a sense of education/ or storytelling. A good example of those would be “How I built my business in 60 seconds,” or “The mistake that cost me $10k.”
What’s Working for Brands Right Now
Real People, Real Stories: Brands learned from the unscripted television space, and storytelling is making a huge comeback. Ongoing narrative – fact: The content that is currently trending virally is not the typical polished corporate drivel with scripts; it is real, messy, and behind-the-scenes content that makes brands look “human.”
Examples:
- “A day in the life of our customer service team”
- “What we learned from our biggest failure”
- “Our employee reacts to our old commercials.”
User-generated content gold: The smartest brands aren’t even trying to generate their own viral content–they are inspiring their customers to produce it for them. When real people and real audiences create content, it’s real, real in a way any amount of professional content will never be, no matter how cool it gets.
Micro-influencer magic: Brands are now playing dozens of smaller influencers instead of a single huge influencer millions of dollars. Those collaborations are not only more real, they also push similar collaborations with huge celebs off the charts.
The Useful Tools & Tricks
AI as your creative partner: AI-generated content, AR/VR challenges, and interactive polls & quizzes are just some of the most exciting trends to come. But do not confuse AI as your stand-in for creativity; use it as a part of the creativity that is your ideas!
Smart ways to use AI:
- To develop multiple options for captions to test.
- To develop attention-grabbing thumbnails quickly.
- To brainstorm content ideas when you feel stumped.
- To assess what is working or not.
The multiple upload strategy: Creators who have used this strategy described a huge uptick when they post variations of the same content to determine what is relevant. It’s sort of like A/B testing creativity for virality.
Your secret weapon is social listening: Just 29% of social marketers are leveraging social listening to keep up with trends, yet the majority of those who do say it positively impacted their business. That means the majority of brands are missing huge opportunities to jump on trends early.
Let’s Stop Doing These (for Good!)
Chasing every trend: Not every trend is right for your brand! If you have a law firm, it may not be the best idea to get in on the latest dance challenges. Make sure to choose trends that make sense for your audience.
Over-produced: To be honest, perfect corporate content is hard to believe these days. People want to see actual, real, behind-the-scenes content, errors, reactions, etc.
Forgetting to engage: Going viral is not only about view counts, it is about getting people talking about that content, engaging them in a conversation. If you have followers commenting on your content that you don’t reply to, you are missing the point!
The Future of Virality
Community-based content: The next phase of virality is genuinely community and gathering people in community, sharing interests, and not just stopping their scrolling for a few seconds.
Interactive experiences: AR filters, live shopping, interactive polls, and a plethora of other experiences are refreshing and reshaping the ways consumers are engaging and sharing with brands.
Authenticity over everything: The brands that will be able to thrive virally will be the storytellers who can learn to be genuinely helpful, entertaining, and/or inspiring in their branding content that doesn’t feel like work.
Some Final Thoughts
Going viral in 2025 isn’t blind luck or magic. It’s knowing your audience well enough to create something that they have an emotionally compelling reason to share, leaving them in a position to share it. It’s about being bold, being real, having the foresight to identify a trend and jump on it at the right time, and being creative enough to create something worth sharing.
At Aella Creative Force, we focus on getting brands to that magical viral moment by marrying data-driven strategy to authentic creativity. Because the best viral content isn’t just about driving views, it creates community, builds conversation, and most importantly, friends turn views into fans.
Are You Ready To Create Your Viral Moment?
While going viral isn’t blind luck, it is about being ready when that opportunity knocks. Whether we help you identify trends, generate shareable content, or develop an actual content strategy, we want to help you create internet magic.
Because in 2025, anyone and any brand have the potential to go viral. The question is, are you ready?
👉 Explore the prompts to make AI-visuals possible: Download our full AI Prompt Collection
