Learn viral marketing the easy way

Viral marketing is one of those things that a lot of people talk about but very few actually understand how to do it. Essentially going viral just means that you have created a piece of content that people want to talk about and share with their friends/visitors/readers. But what are the main points to consider when creating this kind of content?

It’s important to be unique as people on the net really have no desire to see something that’s been done before. If you want people to talk about your site or what you’re doing then you really have to put your own spin on any idea to stand out from the crowd.

Even though people usually create viral campaigns for purely commercial reasons you can’t “oversell” things too much. Surfers are very vary of corporate advertising and are always reluctant to share things with their friends that are too “branded”. Remember the main purpose of the campaign is to make people aware of you and not to just “sell”.

Unless you get the ball rolling with your viral campaign it will more than likely be going no-where fast. Even if you do have something that people feel compelled to share you have to get the ball rolling in some way, the easiest method is to contact a blogger with a large readership to talk about what you’re doing.

It’s still amazing to me how often webmasters will start some kind of marketing campaign but have no idea how successful it has been. To me tracking how many extra visitors and sales a campaign has brought is the only way to work out what works and what doesn’t.

It’s not easy trying to create something that 1000s of people will automatically want to send to their friends. It is possible to do though, even if the hardest part is coming up with the initial idea.

If you’re a new webmaster then check out my marketing site which has lots of advice for anyone starting a website. We have something for everyone.