How to go viral on Instagram
Several of my poems and passages have gone viral. Here, I'll teach you how to create your own potentially-viral posts.
The first of my poems to go viral was I’ve just had a baby and it was like a slow-rolling snowball, gradually picking up pace. A few people shared it, a few more. And then tens, hundreds, thousands. It was so slow, I could almost have missed it.
But the second one, What I want, was different. I hit ‘publish’ on Instagram and within minutes, it was being shared all around the world. It was picked up by the actor and activist Busy Philipps, the singer Paloma Faith and writer Leandra Medine Cohen.
Soon, I was being contacted about being interviewed for magazine articles like this one, in Primer. I created prints of that poem and sold hundreds, in the space of a few weeks. I shipped them around the UK and to the US, Australia, around Europe.
When I contacted a literary agent, introducing myself and asking if she’d be up for representing me, she said: I know you already. You wrote that poem.
As an online writer, it’s useful when your writing goes viral. It opens new doors; creates opportunities. Off the back of I’ve just had a baby going viral, I was commissioned to create six poems for a publication and paid £1000.