The Anatomy of Viral Content: What Makes a Photo Successful on Social Media

Every second, millions of photos and other images are uploaded to social networks. In this stream, it is increasingly difficult to create content that will be interesting to users and go viral.

We at SNRG specialize in working with photo editing applications. By analyzing our experience and data, in this article we will try to break down the anatomy of viral content.

Psychological and Technical Factors

There are two types of factors that make content viral — psychological and technical. These are the ones that need to be taken into account when creating content. Let’s take a closer look at each of them.

Psychological Factors

Let’s start by analyzing the psychological factors.

Emotions. The stronger the emotions content evokes, the higher its chances of going viral. According to research by Jonah Berger, a professor at the Wharton School of Business and author of the book “Contagious: How to Build Word of Mouth in the Digital Age” (Berger, J. (2013). Contagious: How to Build Word of Mouth in the Digital Age. Simon & Schuster.), high-arousal emotions (both positive — awe, excitement, amusement, and negative — anger, anxiety) stimulate people to share content. A photo that makes you smile, surprised, nostalgic, or even slightly indignant is more likely to be shared.

Desire to be better (content as social currency). People are more willing to share content that makes them look better in the eyes of others: smarter, more informed, more fashionable. A photo capturing an exclusive experience, insider information, or simply an aesthetically pleasing image becomes social currency that people exchange.

Current events. Content related to current events, everyday situations, well-known objects or topics is better received by the audience and easily spread (often related to the previous point).

Usefulness and practical value. Images that carry useful information (life hacks, instructions, tips), solve problems, or teach something new are actively saved and forwarded. This could be an infographic, a photo with a step-by-step recipe, or a clear product demonstration. Look at your saved content list on Instagram. What’s in it?

Human stories. People love stories. A photograph that tells a story or is part of one evokes a deeper response. This could be a series of “before and after” shots, a photo report of a trip, or even a single shot hinting at a broader narrative.

Technical Factors

The viral spread of content also has technical components. As a rule, they are related to publishing platforms.

Algorithms. Social networks rank content based on many signals (engagement, viewing time, interactions). Content that quickly gains likes, comments, reposts, and saves gets more reach.

Optimization. Image quality, correct sizes, use of relevant hashtags, geolocation — all this affects the visibility of content.

Publication time. Publishing content during peak activity hours of the target audience increases the chances of an initial surge in engagement.

“Shareability”. The presence of “share” buttons, the ability to embed posts on websites, ease of downloading — all this contributes to virality.

What other factors increase viral potential?

Factors that also influence potential virality include user behavior: both content creators and consumers. What exactly are we talking about?

Initial audience activity. The first hours after content publication are critically important for its spread: if a photo initially gets many likes and other audience reactions, social media algorithms readily distribute such content. This phenomenon is often called “initial velocity”. Therefore, content creators should encourage audience interaction in every possible way.

Human faces. If a photo (or video) features a human face, its chances of success are higher. Human faces (especially if they express emotions) attract more attention. People are biologically predisposed to notice and interpret faces, which makes such content more “hooking.” This is also proven by a Georgia Institute of Technology and Yahoo Labs study (2014), which states that photos with faces are 38% more likely to get likes and 32% more likely to get comments.

Interactivity. Content that directly encourages the audience to interact — asks questions, offers choices, asks to tag friends, participate in a poll or quiz — typically shows higher engagement rates. This is because such formats lower the barrier to participation and make interaction more playful and natural.

Dynamics. Static images, supplemented with even minimal animated elements, effects, or presented in the format of short looping videos (e.g., GIFs), often show better attention retention results compared to absolutely static frames. Movement instinctively attracts the eye. This also aligns with the general trend towards the dominance of video content.

What We Observe Now

SNRG applications: Collageable (for creating collages) and Facelab (for retouching), are not only photo editing tools but also a source of valuable data on users’ visual preferences. We would like to share some insights.

Popularity of the “before and after” genre. Analyzing comments on popular posts created using our applications, we see that photos that evoke a strong emotional response (especially surprise, joy, and nostalgia) have a significantly higher viral coefficient (K-factor). For example, collages created with Collageable, demonstrating “before/after” transformations (renovation, weight loss, child’s growth), are often accompanied by enthusiastic audience comments and stimulate further distribution.

Micro-stories are gaining popularity. The behavior of users of our Collageable application only confirms this fact: collages of 3–5 photos telling a short story in the format of “My Perfect Weekend,” “My June,” “A Day in the Life of…”, “My Vacation” are becoming popular. Mini-stories allow conveying more mood, information, and emotions than a single photo.

For example, here’s the TOP of schemes in our application:

Collage 11–38.1% (percentage of users who share this template)

Collage 54–17.1%

Collage 12–12.2%

Maximum naturalness. Analyzing the behavior of Facelab users, we concluded that people prefer the most natural photos. Our data shows that users respond much better and are maximally emotionally engaged with content that is free of artificiality and “plastic.” We also see that the Facelab functionality that allows retouching photos as subtly as possible, preserving their naturalness, is in high demand. Key points: preserving the naturalness of skin, hair, and eye textures, as well as light and shadow and natural volumes.

The Role of AI in Creating Viral Content

Artificial intelligence (AI) is already fundamentally changing the landscape of content creation, and its role continues to grow. How can AI help in creating viral content?

Smart retouching and enhancement. AI algorithms in applications like Facelab allow automatic photo quality improvement, removing unwanted objects, doing it faster and sometimes more accurately than manual processing.

Content personalization. AI can analyze audience preferences and suggest content options that are more likely to resonate. For example, adapting the color scheme or image style to a specific audience segment.

AI assistants for creativity. AI can suggest ideas for composition, color schemes, and angles based on the analysis of millions of successful images.

Automatic variation creation. AI can generate many variations of one image (different crops, filters, elements) for A/B testing and choosing the most effective one.

The main challenge in this AI creativity is maintaining authenticity and ethics. It is important not to overuse AI to the point where the content looks artificial or misleading. We at SNRG believe that AI should be a tool, but creative decisions should be made by humans.

Instead of a Conclusion

Viral content is a complex and multifaceted story: it’s about a complex cocktail of psychology, art, technology, and a deep understanding of the audience. We are trying to analyze audience and platform behavior to demystify virality and remove its magical aura, allowing creators to create more consciously.

Undoubtedly, there is no universal formula for virality. However, by understanding the fundamental principles and using data, we can create tools that will allow authors to increase their chances of creating content that will not just be seen, but loved by millions.