Content marketing: how to make your content viral?

What are some strategies to create content that has the most chance of going viral organically? I have been writing a few long, well thought blog posts in my niche which, while are super high quality, are not getting much traffic.

How do you approach content marketing from step 1?

Simple answer: make stuff that people want to share.

Hard answer: There's a lot of mathematics and psychology behind "viral". Start by googling "viral co-efficient" and you'll start to realise how hard it really is.

Here's the low hanging fruit if you're just starting out: find content that has already gone viral, and make something significantly better.

1. Find authoritative content that people have already linked to using Topsy or AppSumo.
2. Make something far better.
3. Reach out to the people who linked to that previously viral content.
4. Reach out to influencers who shared that content on social media.