India White says, “Back in 2013, while working at an influencer marketing startup, my friend Daniel Hebert and I were discussing virality—that somewhat taboo, pie-in-the-sky idea of creating content that gets millions of shares and likes. It’s a marketer’s dream, but for most of us, it will never be a reality.

From this bitter truth came the notion of “perceived virality”: the idea that a piece of content shared by just a few people within a highly interconnected community could create the sense of content being popular, or viral.

If I see a piece of content that is interesting to me, and I have time at that moment, I may or may not read it. If I see a piece of content shared by several people I trust and recognize as thought leaders, I will take note and read it right away. If several people in my network are sharing it, it must be worth a read.

How Perceived Virality Works

As seen above, these are regular people with average reach. They know each other and have individuals within their combined audience that follow all three of them. If Hannah, Ryan, and Ardi were to each share the same piece of content, it is likely that those 275 people in the overlap will see the piece of content shared by all three of them. At this point, the content is considered to be popular in this network or perceived as viral”.

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