How to increase the flow of traffic on a website is the recurring dilemma of webmasters. One of the methods that have spawned many success stories in driving traffic into websites is viral marketing. Viral marketing is simply making use of the tendency of a person to share something they find informative, entertaining of amazing and blogging is one of the ways that viral marketing is facilitated.

These days, everybody is blogging and you can incorporate blogging into your sales marketing and have a lot more success. It isn’t that hard to do. Just have your customers write diary entries about goals they have reached using your product, the good emotions it’s given them, the fears and worries your product has taken out of their lives, how bad their lives were before they bought it, how it has helped other people in their lives, how much better their lives are since they began using your product, and on and on.

Customers could update their blog daylily, weekly or monthly. It will depend on how often they use your product. If you are teaching them a skill, they can blog their progress. You must provide your customers with web space for writing their online diary (blog) or have them e-mail you the blog entries for you to publish. Your customer’s online blogs can be made extra persuasive by including personal profiles, pictures, online video of them using your product, net audio of them talking about your product, and so forth.

An online blog would likely outsell the common testimonial because it is updated on a regular basis and gives more personal information and since a diary (blog) is considered private, it makes people more curious to read it and believe that what is said is true.

In the Days Before Blogs ….

In the early days of online listserv or discussion groups, a company that launched a product or new technology without the proper testing could be literally crippled by these groups. There were instances where companies would discount the opinions of listservs as they watched their sales decline until they finally realized they couldn’t simply ignore it and continue with business as usual. It took a while, but companies finally understood that they had to go into the groups and communicate and manage customers and customer messaging with facts.

They had to be heard and they had to manage crises. A similar situation could occur today but we have the opportunity to build relationships with bloggers by giving them the facts that tell our story. The power of communication belongs to bloggers and they lead the way with word-of-mouth (or mouse) marketing. They are serious enough about communication that they sign up for RSS feeds that alert them when one of their favorite blogs has been updated or modified. It is a ‘reminder” to check the blog. I’m sure you recall that listservs or bulletin boards drew many “authorities” who were able to shape consumer confidence of newly released tech products by posting and positioning themselves with their peers.

Bloggers are positioning themselves as experts to their peers. If the value of your company is in the hands of bloggers, shouldn’t you know what they are saying about you? Blogging is communication in, perhaps, its purest form. A big debate is currently underway regarding the usefulness of blogs as advertising vehicles. The fact is that they are a very important channel through which we can reach our audience and one of the primary new ways we can effectively communicate brand messages in a genuine way to very specific groups of people who have hundreds of online acquaintances with those same specific interest.

Just turn on MTV or VH1 these days and you’ll witness Michael Jackson’s tribute videos. King of Pop died few days ago and left remarkable musical opus, even if you’re not a fan you have to admit: the man had a gift.

Being the largest pop star of our time Michael Jackson had big marketing machinery behind all his projects. Naturally marketing techniques used included viral marketing even long before this term was invented. Before Internet and social networks MTV was the place to concentrate your marketing efforts and successful musical videos made sure album is going to sell well and tour will be sold out. First of those videos was “Thriller”, zombies and good dancing produced great marketing wave and the album reached world sales record that nobody beat so far.

Michael Jackson did not use viral marketing for his music only, in 1985 together with Lionel Richie he wrote and recorded, along with all the popular musicians of the time, hit single “We Are The World”. The song and it’s video had purpose to bring world’s awareness to AIDS problem. The song was huge success and generated millions of dollars to help fight AIDS.

King of Pop left this Earth but his legacy stays for generations to be inspired by a great artist and a noble man. Michael always had a strong sense for charity and help many people in need.

Farewell Michael, we will listen to your songs and remember you for a long, long time.

Well, Twitter is out there, for some time already. It’s a pity not to use it in your viral arsenal.

As a micro blogging platform, Twitter turned out to be valuable tool for spreading your message or messages around internet. Although it takes some time to get the number of people following you, it does the job and increases your exposure. Its short form forces you to be creative and that’s definitely good. You can either inform your followers that new article is about to be published or put intro in your Twitter update. If it’s interesting enough, your followers will take a look at your web site. Putting a link in your bio is a must, that way the followers know where to look for your content.

Sure you don’t want to be too obvious promoting your web site, but bunch of people on Twitter don’t really care about that and put their links shamelessly. Lately it’s been noticed that almost all of these people, aggressively promoting their websites, often open several accounts with bunch of __ in front, in the middle or at the end of nickname. It gets boring after some time to notice people with different versions of the same nickname appear on your follow notification list all the time. Twitter system got lot smarter lately and more and more such accounts get suspended. Good work Twitter system people! :-)

As many other social websites Twitter gets exploited in not so ethic ways to increase presence of someone’s link over internet. We all know that presence is the strategy to get higher rank on Google, but please, is anything respected for its primary purpose any more!?

The latest example of Twitter exploitation is described here. As the comment on the page says: “It was just matter of time something like this popped up”.

The fact that someone developed hijack script to be used on Twitter only proves that Twitter is huge, so if you haven’t already it’s a high time to start to use it. Barack Obama, Schwarzenegger and Britney already do!

If you are still not sure, here is a great video that will show you all the benefits of using Twitter.

To your Twitter success!

www.twitter.com/mgrbic

Recent analyze by an interactive marketing agency, showed that 89% of adult Internet users in United States of America share content with others via e-mail. This is first-class intelligence for those companies who use self-propelling “word-of-mouse” e-mail formulas to sell their products.

The study gave a few interesting results regarding the type of content that is most often forwarded, as well. The most popular content is humorous stuff.

The second most popular category is news, accompanied by health care and medical info, spiritual and religious material, games, business and personal finance info and sports/hobbies… in that order. So it is easy to see that humor is the best content for your buzz e-mail campaign.

Cartoons, jokes and funny video clips are among the things that can be added to an e-mail to insure that it will go viral. People will prefer to pass along something that makes them laugh.

They are a lot more likely to hit the forward button and send your email to their friends and relatives if it is an “advertainment” rather than an advertisement.

Not along ago, about 35 million people got an e-mail containing a picture taken in Disneyland. It took a minute to see it but there was Donald Duck lying prone in front of the famous Cinderella Castle. The title of the picture was “Bird Flu has hit Disneyland”. It was a viral e-mail advertising Disneyland and used the edgy strategy of making light of what’s serious… and it works.

I’d guess that most people who own a computer have seen that picture… and thus the advertisement for Disneyland. The bird flu epidemic is newsworthy and has the potential to attract an enormous amount of attention to any brand that might, for whatever reason, associate itself with it.

Remember that people are much more likely to share a joke or a funny picture than anything else so you would be well advised to include humor in your e-mail campaign.

Everybody likes buzz

Viral marketing has matured a bit over the years. There seems to have been a shift to the web not just being seen by agencies and brands as another tick box for any ad campaign, which is significant enough, but now being the medium where a campaign is launched to create a buzz before it hits TV and print. Even before a movie is released which used to be seen as the pre-launch buzz-generation activity. Big business “gets it”.

Buzz works!

It can work for small and start-up businesses, as well. The planning stage of a viral campaign will set out objectives and develop the viral theme for a buzz. There are three core components to any viral campaign and businesses of any size can use them. They are:

1.    The creative material: the viral agent that embodies the message you want to spread in a digital format (image, video, text, etc). The trick is to put together material that people will be eager to share with their family and friends and people are much more eager to share “advertainment” and advertisement.

2.    Seeding: distributing and placing the agent online in places that provide the greatest potential spread. Direct viral material downloads or links on specialist viral third-party web sites in order to create awareness and spread before users get to the campaign destination site.

3.    Tracking: Measuring the spread of the campaign to provide accountability and prove success. It is absolutely vital that you know what is or is not working. The only way to get that information is to track the results of your seeding.

Lessons have been learned, trends have been developed and there is definitely some science involved in creating a buzz successfully. The buzz technique is here to stay and, if used strategically, it can make a difference to the success of your e-business.

Should I create an e-book?

E-books should be used in a viral marketing campaign as much as possible, because it’s not that hard to create an e-book any more. These days there are lot of free pdf tools that ease the process and make it literary just few mouse clicks. Any previously written material combined and put in a single document, little work with contents page, page numbers and links (affiliate links even better), cover page and introduction, and you have your e-book ready in no time. The process also applies for new material; write it from scratch and the rest is as previously described.

E-book software

Although there are pretty cool and easy commercial software products out there that are priced up to 100 dollars, all you need to create nice looking e-book is a word processor and pdf virtual printer such as Cute pdf. The latest version of Open Office even has pdf feature implemented right away, so it’s only a matter of an extra click. We’re discussing viral e-books which do not need to be password protected or with disabled print option, so any of those advanced options are not necessary. You should make your e-book accessible, not restricted in any way. Of course if you plan to produce commercial e-books on regular basis and viral ones are to be produced from time to time, it might be a good idea to purchase professional e-book software. It makes your product look better and gives credibility to price you asking for.

How “packed” your e-book should be?

I have seen number of e-books that are packed with links; affiliate links, links to author’s sells page etc. This is done to the point that e-book doesn’t even look as regular book, but as series of links that are put there just to make you click on any of those links so the author makes sale or commission if you buy any of the products featured. Besides the fact that it looks lame and pathetic, I can’t imagine a person that will buy a single product offered in such way. It’s better to make a short report if you don’t have enough material and present valuable information, than pack an e-book with anything just to make it longer. Besides all viral materials should be produced as valuable information product that drives reader’s attention to author’s other products through web page link or resource box discreetly put on the bottom of each page. Do not underestimate readers’ intelligence, people will find your page if they like material, do not make your e-book in form of series of traps for people to click on your link.

How come e-books are that popular?

Well, the answer is kind of obvious: it has package form. It is a product, very convenient to be sent, given, forwarded or sold (resell rights). People respect books as source of knowledge and information that is rarely questioned. It’s a clever product. Needless to say that its form as a single file and pdf as multiplatform format gives an e-book unbeaten advantage. E-books are now even readable on netbook computers, handhelds and lately on cell phones.

Viral Media

Let’s explore type of “virus carriers” you can use to spread your message. E-books, white papers, reports, posted articles or email (newsletter) are classical written e-paper media.

Video or audio clip is another type of media, sponsored software or web service offered to anyone for free, but with “the message” displayed, can also be quite accurate.

Content

OK, we covered media part, but what about content? You have to have some valuable material posted, written, or recorded; in order for it to be spread (forwarded) around. Let’s say you have produced a funny clip or document full of jokes that has your web link or watermark in it. Everyone who watches it or reads it gets to see your link or watermark, few of those even click on it (if it’s clickable of course) or google it because if material is good enough it will bring that curiosity in people. You should provoke some kind of reaction, ideally excitement or laughter, which will for sure make people spread your material further.

Making it easy for readers to spread your material

It’s not a big deal for your readers to forward your newsletter or send the link of your page to a friend, but why not make it even easier with few extra tools such as “Tell a friend” script and “Digg” or “Stumbleupon” button on your page. Domain name also should be easy to remember, definitely containing key words or at least word of two combining the subject you cover.

Viral marketing – great push to your promotion

Same as any marketing technique viral marketing should promote and bring clicks to your page/product, but it’s designed in a way it wouldn’t do that so obvious as mainstream marketing does; it is more done in a “by the way” manner.

Viral marketing should be used along with other marketing techniques as an addition, although I am sure there are few examples out there proving it successful as the only approach.

Viral Marketing – what the heck is that?!

If you do little searching around the Net about viral marketing all you find is useless definitions and few examples: Hotmail and some blah, blah. That’s it, more or less.

Actually the principle behind viral marketing is very simple: to make people spread your message willingly or not that willingly. As Hotmail example showed, message was spread without much choice for Hotmail user: at the bottom of each sent email. But users were ready to accept that small detail as Hotmail introduced first free email service.

Spreading the virus

Well, what if you need to launch marketing campaign on your own, limited budget of course and find yourself thinking about viral approach. It doesn’t mean viral campaign cannot cost you a fortune, but let’s focus on successful and not that expensive.

First of all you need to have a quality product to promote and build your campaign around. No marketing technique in the World would help you sell a product you wouldn’t want to buy yourself. It gets tricky if you are hired to promote some lousy product, but that’s a question of choice.

What makes it viral? How do you accomplish your “word” gets spread? Insert word free into the text, and attach a link to it. That of course implies that you have something to offer for free, it doesn’t have to be something of high value, but people tend to respond to freebies without much thinking and that will do the job – information will be forwarded and eventually it will draw clicks to your product.

Or, make it funny, cool, weird, fresh, innovative; anything that will make people want to forward your email, link to your page or video, visit your site…