A Few Simple Viral Marketing Tips

Written by Ryan Hill Monday, 05 September 2011 06:26

The holy grail of internet marketing is figuring out how to make something take on viral behavior on the web. It is something like a celestial event that defies understanding and predictability. One possible idea is to study videos at YouTube, and search on those that have been viewed ten or twenty million times and study them. Here are several timely guidelines to get you off to a good start in this potentially explosive-results area of marketing.

The holy grail of internet marketing is figuring out how to make something take on viral behavior on the web. It is something like a celestial event that defies understanding and predictability. One possible idea is to study videos at YouTube, and search on those that have been viewed ten or twenty million times and study them. Here are several timely guidelines to get you off to a good start in this potentially explosive-results area of marketing.

There is a good reason why you cannot let your content get stale or fail to update what you do have. It is always possible to get inspiration from the latest trends in any industry or market. But keep in mind that this is only one possibility out of many. There will always be something that's newsworthy or is brewing a controversy, and that's when you piggy-back on the current trends to make your own campaign go viral. Every single day there are so many things that are trending up and down. In fact, many people use the trend service provided by Google for free, and that is something you should explore.

If you upload a video to YouTube, then the ability for people to share it is already there, and you do not need to do anything special. So just remember that you have to help the process along just by making sure there are no obstacles. You want this to be shared, so put it in a format that makes that very easy and simple to do. You know how impatient we all are on the net, and that is what this is addressing. Something like a PDF usually does not have a share button, but we are beginning to see them.

You need to get your target audience interested in what you're offering and actually give them something to bite on. Almost all people tend to react the same way except for maybe those professionals who may not. The more you can make the content really stand out and emotional, then your chances will be better. If you wanted to get feedback, then do a small poll or ask some friends what they think. Realize that it is very difficult to do this on purpose, and it takes experience and knowledge of psychology, we feel, to do it with intent.

Viral marketing can be done in a limited way with something like the IM niche where you can create ebooks that can be passed around, etc. Do not go looking for any specific rules of the game because there are not any. What you have to look forward to is a lot of work, a lot of marketing and failing perhaps all the time. So that is the real deal with viral marketing, and it could turn out well for you. When you have done enough campaigns, you will definitely improve in some areas that could pay off later on. Once you start applying these tactics in real time, you'll find that viral marketing is not as hard as people make it out to be.