The Ultimate Pet Influencers Guide to Creating Viral Content in 2024

What is a Pet Influencer?

A pet influencer is an animal with a large social media following that collaborates with brands to promote products or services. As of 2022, the pet influencer market is expected to be worth $15 billion.

Key stats:

• There are over 50 million pet influencer followers on Instagram alone
• Sponsored posts can earn pet influencers up to $10,000
• 92% of pet owners say their pet is part of the family

Pet influencers tap into people's love for animals to create engaging content. They utilize platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube to amass a loyal following.

What makes pet influencers so popular is their ability to trigger an emotional response. Cute, funny, or heartwarming content helps form connections with audiences.

Why Create Viral Content?

Creating viral content should be a pet influencer's ultimate goal. But what exactly constitutes "viral" content?

"Viral content" refers to media that is widely shared and liked among internet users. This includes videos, images, articles, and more.

Here are some of the key benefits of creating viral pet influencer content:

• Increased reach: Viral content spreads rapidly across social platforms, allowing you to reach a much wider audience
• Boosted engagement: Audiences are more likely to like, comment, and share viral posts
• Enhanced brand awareness: Viral content gets your brand and pets in front of many more potential fans/followers
• Higher conversions: You can promote products, merch, events much more effectively with viral content
• Positive associations: Viral content portrays your brand in an entertaining, emotional, or inspiring light

Pet influencers should aim to incorporate elements like humor, surprise/shock value, positivity, entertainment, or pull at the heart strings with their viral content.

Target Audience

Identifying and understanding your target audience is key for pet influencers looking to create viral content.

When creating content, you need to know who you are creating it for in order to resonate with them.

Pet Owners

Pet owners make up a significant portion of followers for many pet influencers. Their content caters to pet owner interests, struggles, and goals.

Key Demographics:

• 67% are female
• Largest age group is 26-35 years old
• 73% live in suburban or urban areas
• 34% have household incomes over $100k

Content Pet Owners Love:

• Pet care tips, advice
• Funny pet moments, bloopers
• Pet product reviews, recommendations
• Pet parenting challenges, solutions
• Pet + human bonding moments

Potential Customers

Pet influencers can showcase products or recommend items to appeal to potential shoppers. Their content spotlights pets enjoying products.

Potential customers for pet influencers include:

• Pet parents
• Pet product brands
• Pet shops/retailers
• Animal shelters, rescue groups

Business Owners

Pet influencers work with a range of businesses to promote brands, products, events or services.

Their sponsorships, endorsements or co-created content can:

• Boost brand awareness
• Increase purchase intent
• Improve brand sentiment
• Drive website traffic, social engagement

Businesses that leverage pet influencer marketing span industries like:

• Pet food/supplies
• Toys, accessories, apparel
• Pet tech, mobile apps
• Pet insurance, health
• Travel industry

Social Media Platforms

Social media is incredibly important for pet influencers aiming to create viral content and grow their followings.

72% of marketers believe that Instagram delivers the highest ROI for pet influencer campaigns" according to MediaKix.

Instagram

With its focus on visuals, Instagram is perfect for pet influencers to showcase cute, funny, or heartwarming photos/videos of their pets.

Popular post types on Instagram that tend to go viral:

• Reels - playful, entertaining
• Carousels - multiple images, angles
• IGTV series - longer videos

TikTok

The short-form video app offers pet influencers a creative outlet to produce entertaining and engaging videos centered around their pets. Funny pet reactions, challenges, pet + human moments are very shareable.

YouTube

In-depth vlogs and videos allow pet influencers to truly showcase their pet's personality over longer periods of time and establish themselves as authorities. Unboxings, reviews product demos, daily life segments, and more all enable pet influencers to strengthen bonds with their followers on YouTube.

Facebook

With its massive user base, Facebook enables pet influencers a means through which they can directly engage with pet owners and animal lovers through posts, groups, discussions and live videos.

Twitter

While Twitter may not be quite as visually focused, it enables pet influencers to share commentary, funny observations, snackable thoughts centered around pets, animals, products and more with followers in real time.

Types of Content That Go Viral

There is no one size fits all formula for creating viral pet influencer content. However, there are certain types of content that lend themselves well to going viral across platforms.

Funny or Cute Pet Content

Humans are hardwired to react positively to cute animals. Content showcasing pets being silly or adorable is highly shareable and can easily go viral.

Examples:

• Funny facial expressions
• Pets in costumes, "outfits"
• Fails, bloopers
• Cute reactions

Pro Tip: Capture your pet's naturally funny or cute moments on camera frequently so you have a portfolio of authentic viral content waiting to be unleashed.

Emotional Storytelling

Content that tugs at people's heart strings have high viral potential. Feature your pets in touching stories of rescue, recovery, bonding and love to elicit strong emotional reactions.

Examples:

• Overcoming adversity
• Unlikely animal friendships
• Reunion stories
• "Underdog" moments

"Content that elicits high-arousal emotions such as awe is more viral," according to researchers Jonah Berger and Katherine Milkman.

Educational Content

Create informative content centered around pets that provides value to your target audiences. Useful pet care tutorials, training videos, pet product tutorials allow you to highlight your expertise.

Examples:

• Pet training guides
• DIY pet projects
• Pet grooming, health tips
• Pet tech product tutorials

Collaborations

Partner up with other pet influencers to co-create viral content together for each others' audiences. Cross-promote to tap into each other's follower base.

Also look to team up with pet brands, animal shelters/rescue organizations to produce sponsor content that aligns with your brand image.

Optimization for Multiple Platforms

Repurpose your top-performing content across platforms through edits to cater to each platform's algorithm and audience.

For example, turn a popular YouTube video into short clips for TikTok, carousels and Reels on Instagram, etc.

Becoming a Pet Influencer

If you're looking to turn your beloved pet into a bonafide internet celeb, here are some tips:

• Build an audience: Regularly post quality photos/videos of your pet being cute or funny
• Engage followers: Respond to comments, ask questions, run polls to spark conversation
• Utilize hashtags: Use relevant hashtags so your content is more discoverable
• Partner with brands: Once you accumulate thousands of engaged followers, offer sponsored posts
• Diversify content: Share a mix of cute pet moments, educational content, emotional stories, etc.
• Analyze performance: See which posts generate the most engagement to inform your content strategy

In terms of compensation, established pet influencers charge around $100 per 10k followers. A 100k pet influencer could charge over $1,000 for a single sponsored post.

Wrapping Up

Creating viral content presents pet influencers a valuable opportunity to rapidly expand their audience, improve engagement, land brand sponsorships and showcase their pets' charming personalities.

By tapping into emotional storytelling, producing funny or cute pet content, collaborating with other influencers/brands and optimizing posts for multiple platforms - pet influencers can elevate their personal brands and monetization potential dramatically.

The key is to consistently crank out creative, high-quality and relevant content tailored to your target audience that aligns with your brand image. Take risks, get to know your audience and watch the view counts rise!

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How much do top pet influencers make?

A: According to Yahoo Finance, top pet influencers can make over $100k per Instagram post. Jiffpom reportedly makes over $32k per post.

Q: What types of brands partner with pet influencers?

A: Pet food brands, pet accessories/toy brands, pet tech brands, pet insurance providers, veterinary medications/services and more partner with pet influencers.

Q: How many pet influencers are there?

A: There are thousands of pet influencer accounts across social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube with over 10,000+ followers.

Q: Why do pet influencers use hashtags?

A: Hashtags help pet influencers organize content categorically and enable their posts to be discovered by wider audiences already following certain hashtags.

Q: How often should you post as a pet influencer?

A: Ideally, pet influencers should aim to post high-quality, engaging photos or videos of their pets 1-2 times per day.