How to Make An Article Go Viral — My Video Presentation (in Italian!) from the BiT Tourism Conference

Today, I’m coming at you from London, UK. (Are you in London? Come to my meetup on Tuesday) About a month ago, I left my cozy apartment in NYC to start traveling in Europe—starting off by lecturing at a travel conference in Milan.

On February 15, I gave a short talk entitled ‘How to Make a Story Go Viral’ at the BiT Tourism Conference in Milan. But it wasn’t just any lecture—it was my first talk in Italian.

You probably know that I am an avid language learner — I spent 2008-2010 learning two languages a year (I speak five presently). I talk about how to learn languages in this post on ZenHabits, “How to Learn a Language in 90 Days.” Brian also recently wrote a guest post about how he used my methods to learn German.

Conversational fluency, however, is far different than real fluency. Giving a speech in Italian to a real audience was one of the more nervewracking things I’ve ever done—not helped by the fact that I wrote my speech the day before the presentation. Hey, cut me some slack—it was Valentine’s day!

The video is below. I talk about how I used viral marketing to make my Craigslist Slapper aticle go viral.

I REALLY want to say thanks to Mikaela Bandini of CantForget.It for hosting the panel and making this happen. Here is an article I wrote about becoming a digital nomad for CantForget.it: The Digital Nomad Life.

Thanks as well to Friulia Venezia Giulia and to Giuditta Barduzzi for making this trip happen.

Have you ever had to present or lecture in a second language? How did it go?