Top Viral Marketing Strategies

If you are like other motivated entrepreneurs, viral marketing plays an important role in your marketing strategy. Viral marketing, when successful, has the ability to skyrocket awareness and profits.

What Is Viral Marketing?

Viral marketing is content that has captured the attention of the mainstream consumer. It is content that people bookmark, forward, post on social networking sites and link to. Viral content has the ability to spread from one corner of the globe to the other. It spreads like a virus and can change a business overnight.

9 Top Viral Marketing Tactics

First, let us be clear. Viral marketing is content marketing. However, when you are creating your content, your goal broadens. You want to offer value to your prospects and customers. However, you also want to go beyond offering basic value. You want the content to be so compelling that it goes viral. There are several types of content that can help you reach your viral marketing goals.

#1 Lists

People love lists. In fact there are many popular books that are nothing more than a long list. For example 101 Uses for a Dead Cat. This book was a big seller and was nothing more than a long, and perhaps humorous, list. Lists are easily downloaded and shared, and they are often linked to. They make great viral content. Think about your audience and the value they are seeking. What lists can you provide that might go viral?

#2 Quizzes

Ever notice that just about every magazine has some sort of quiz inside? That is because people like their content to be interactive. Quizzes offer the opportunity to learn something about yourself or reinforce something you know about yourself. They also allow you to interact. Quizzes, like lists, can be funny, interesting and informative for the user or interesting and informative for you. You can use a quiz to learn more about your prospects and customers.

#3 Tools

Tools are things people can use. One great example of a tool might be an iPod application or a downloadable worksheet. A tool is also something that makes your prospect's life easier. It offers value.

#4 Video

Video may be the most popular type of viral content. Most often the videos that go viral are funny, but they can also be informative or heart wrenching. Randy Pausch's Last Lecture is an example of a viral video that is heart breaking and inspirational at the same time. Explore your audience's needs and preferences and then brainstorm ideas for a video.

#5 Images

Photos and cartoons are common viral images. They can capture an idea, make people laugh, or inspire them to take action.

#6 'How to' Content

When it comes to standard content forms, it does not get better than the 'How To'. Your 'How To' content can be video, audio, or print - whatever your audience responds to.

#7 Funny Story (or meaningful/touching story)

Humor tends to be the most popular type of viral content found online. However, a touching story, life lesson, or an inspirational story also spreads quickly. If you have a story to share, craft it well, make it public and then share.

#8 Controversy

Loud opinions about situations always stir up a controversy. Many people will want to weigh in and share their opinion too. Reports are a great way to create viral marketing content that is controversial. Blog posts work quite well too because they provide people with a format to respond. One way to capitalize on controversy is to create a free report, promote it and discuss it on your blog. This way you are reaching your audience quickly and the viral report will spread quickly.

#9 Sweepstakes, Contests and Giveaways

Finally, the last type of content that can easily go viral is a contest or sweepstakes. This is because everyone likes to get something for free and everyone likes to win. The bigger the prize, the more quickly word will spread. For example, if you are giving away an iPad on your blog, you will likely gain a ton of traffic. People will be linking to your blog and there will be quite a commotion. Give away a free report and you are not going to have as much activity. The key to capitalizing on this type of viral content is to build your opt-in list at the same time.

Creating viral content is the first step to a successful campaign. You will also want to integrate it into your overall marketing strategy. Use every tool available to get the word out quickly.

Whether you are marketing a business, service, or yourself, learning new marketing and communication strategies and using online tools can help give you that 'edge' to get ahead of your competition.

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The Anatomy of Viral Marketing

Three deadly myths of viral marketing

"Viral" is a term that's thrown around very loosely by marketers these days, which has muddled the true meaning of the term.

Here are three common misconceptions about viral marketing that will doom any campaign to failure from the start:

Myth #1: Viral marketing = Share buttons

Making content sharable is not the same as making it viral. Viral marketing is not as simple as adding social sharing badges to your website. Likewise, extending your content to social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn will not make it viral.

These are merely vehicles that make it easier for people to pass your content along to others in their network. There's no guarantee that whatever is being shared will have life beyond the initial posting.

Myth #2: Viral = Video

"Viral" and "video" are uttered in the same breath so often that it seems as thought they are inextricably linked.

In fact, this is not the case at all. There's nothing about videos that makes them inherently more viral than any other kind of content.

Viral videos may get a lot of hype, but in reality, any kind of content can go viral - a photo, an article, a fundraising campaign, even an entire website.

The potential of something to go viral has nothing to do with the medium and everything to do with the content and its ability to motivate a continuous chain of sharing.

Myth #3: Viral = 1,000,000 million hits

Going viral is not the web-equivalent of a record going platinum. There's no arbitrary number that certifies something as having gone viral.

The primary goal of viral marketing should not be to achieve a pre-determined number of hits, views or retweets but to create something with nearly unlimited potential to resonate with people - whether on an emotional, pragmatic or ideological level - so that its reach exceeds ordinary expectations.

What is viral?

To answer that question, forget marketing jargon and go back to biology class. What sets a virus apart from other organisms is that it has the ability to replicate itself when it finds the right environment variables.

The same quintessential elements apply to viral marketing. By definition, viral content is self-perpetuating and requires little or no additional investment in the act of moving it through the Web from one person to another. It is the very opposite of traditional advertising's pay-to-play model, which demands greater spending to buy greater exposure.

The concept of viral marketing is nothing new, but it has exploded in the past decade because the mechanisms for sharing have evolved and expanded as social media has permeated the mainstream.

The original form of viral content was the e-mail forward. When someone found something entertaining, informative or self-defining, they'd paste it into an e-mail message and send it to everyone in their address book, and many of those recipients would likewise forward it along. Social sharing is today's version of the e-mail forward.

On the surface, viral marketing seems easy because the most successful campaigns make it look that way. However, once you dig deeper into its anatomy, it becomes clear that there are a limited number of pathways through which a piece of web content can go viral.

It's not enough for something just to be good. There's too much good stuff on the Web for all of it to catch fire. If you want to create something that will grow and extend itself after you send it out into the world, it must harness one of three fundamental elements of self-perpetuating content: entertainment, a giveaway or self-definition.

The three channels of viral marketing

1. Entertainment

This category is probably what naturally springs to mind when you hear the word "viral." However, this is actually the most difficult route to take and demands a level creative resources that are typically prohibitive for the average business.

With the hype surrounding high-profile viral marketing campaigns like Old Spice's "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like," it's easy to oversimplify the formula for what it takes to pull this off. Everyone thinks their own stuff is entertaining, but in the eye of the beholder, this is rarely the case.

When you attempt to play in this space, you're going up against the big guns who have immense resources to throw at superstar writers, artists, editors and producers. In the face of those odds, it's very risky to hope that you'll strike the magic combination of unique content and flawless execution to win the jackpot.

For every phenomenal success like Old Spice, there are plenty of embarrassing, high-dollar flops. And, yes, sometimes a kid with a webcam becomes an Internet sensation. But that's like capturing lightning in a bottle. It's nothing you can create artificially, and it's very difficult to cultivate organically.

2. The giveaway

In stark contrast to viral entertainment, the viral giveaway is potentially attainable by any business large or small, local or national.

There are two ways to approach this type of campaign, depending on the nature of your business:

If you deal in goods, you can give away free or discounted products to customers (think Groupon).

If you deal in services, you can give away time or expertise (or both).

In either case, there is heavy competition in the giveaway space, so it's critical to ensure that there is significant perceived value in your offering, typically in terms of time or money saved for your customer.

But the giveaway is not viral in and of itself. What creates the mechanism for self-perpetuation is framing it as a reward received in exchange for participation in spreading your message.

This is something not all companies are prepared to do. The idea of creating something only to give it away seems ludicrous by conventional thinking.

However, you can't look at the giveaway as a loss. The reality is that this is today's marketing. Instead of pouring tens of thousands of dollars into carpet-bombing advertising that no one believes in, you're investing in word of mouth - the most powerful form of trustcasting.

The act of giving away your valuable goods or expertise creates trust among your customers, who pass your message along to their friends and followers, who then spread it through their networks. Suddenly hundreds of new potential customers suddenly know who you are and what you do, with the added benefit of being recommended by someone they know and trust, and that trust is conveyed to you by association.

3. Self-definition

A product, an idea or a concept that is new, innovative, unique or just plain awesome is sharable.

But when it makes a bold statement - not about your company but about life, work or culture - that strikes a chord in the beholder, that's when it has the potential to go viral.

When someone shares this type of content, they're defining themselves through the act of sharing, attaching themselves to the history, the character or the lifestyle that exists around your brand. They're identifying themselves as belonging to your tribe.

When Nike's "Write the Future" debuted in May 2010, it set a new record for the most views of a viral video ad in its first week.

Its popularity was undoubtedly due in part to the celebrity appeal of the soccer superstars featured, but it also touches on a deeper love for the sport, for the World Cup and even for the feeling of connection with others inspired by a shared passion for a certain team or player. When someone shares this video with their friends, they're attaching their identity to these broader concepts.

But you don't have to be Nike to pull this off. If I post a link to your blog to my profile on LinkedIn, I'm defining myself as a torchbearer for your ideas. If I take a take a quiz on your website and tweet my score, I'm boasting about my intelligence. And if I make a donation to your nonprofit organization and share it on Facebook, I'm defining myself as an altruistic person who supports If your cause. In each case, my act of sharing challenges other like-minded people within my network to do the same, because they want to attach themselves to these ideas and qualities, too.

Execution

Viral marketing can't be a one-off effort. You also can't come up with an idea and tack on elements of viral marketing as an afterthought.

If you're going to play in this space, it must permeate every aspect of your business model, from your R&D process to your pricing structure to your marketing strategy. Your website and your presence on social media networks must be built to be part of the viral mechanism. You must focus on creating a self-perpetuating engine of traffic, conversion and sales.

To be successful, you must know your tribe and know it well. You must be realistic about what its members like and what they will respond to.

You must also be willing to take risks. Behind every successful viral campaign is trial and error, careful tracking of metrics and fine-tuning of the approach.

Are the risks worthwhile? In a word, yes. Today's most powerful business growth platforms are built on trustcasting and permission marketing. There's no more direct route to owning your market than having a tribe of brand evangelists who carry your message for you, and viral marketing transforms the spark of word of mouth into an inferno that propels you ahead of your competition.

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Internet Web Traffic - The Types Of Traffic Outlined

When it comes to really thinking about Internet web traffic, you can break it all down and make it really simple. This is a good first step in traffic generation. One way of looking at traffic generation is to categorize it into three. That is, Internet traffic that you either, buy, borrow or steal! (by stealing traffic, I mean that it's free...).

Internet web traffic that you can get for free    

Of course, when I say free, it will almost certainly involve plenty of time. So, by saying free, I mean traffic that you do not have to get your wallet out for. There is no monetary cost involved. But, do bear in mind that it's often a trade-off. If you are getting free traffic, you are doing the work. If you are paying for it, someone else does the work for you!

What kinds of Internet web traffic can you get for free? Well, probably the biggest and best (and one of the oldest free traffic tactics) is article marketing. Article marketing works because your article will most likely stay as content on the web for years. One article can be spread around like wild-fire with content sharing. Plus, your visitors are very targeted.

Another free method would be using Web 2.0 sites. But, really, this is a kind of article marketing, since you need to write articles for each site you create. The current vogue in free Internet web traffic is, of course, video marketing. But, this is really another 'spin' on article marketing. The two are very similar except for the format of the content. Video marketing is really exploding, right now, and you need to know what's going on.

Internet web traffic that you borrow of someone else

When you borrow traffic from someone else, you are getting some traffic that belongs to them. You are leveraging someone else's resource. They have the traffic, and you do a deal to have those same visitors visit your website. This way of getting web traffic works totally on building relationships and trust. But, since so much success on-line relies on the very same thing, it's really worth pursuing.

What kinds of Internet web traffic can you borrow? The main way would be to get access to an Internet marketer's list. Then, that fellow marketer becomes a joint venture partner. You might give them an affiliate commission for promoting your product. You might do an ad swap. Or, you might organize some other incentive that is attractive to them.

Internet web traffic that you have to buy

This is where the many horror stories come in! We've all heard of those who have lost their shirt with PPC (pay per click) advertising campaigns. But, it doesn't have to be like that. The thing to do is start slow and small. Build up your campaigns as you gain experience. It's easy to be drawn in to spending a fortune, because we all want success now! I suppose the way to approach it is with discipline. With discipline, you can make traffic you have to pay for work.

What kinds of Internet web traffic can you buy? Mainly, this will be some kind of advertising. The best known way to advertize is Google AdWords. But, there are many other pay per click companies. Then, there is banner advertising and a whole host of other tactics.



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