Once you have your eBook written and checked and re-checked and checked again for grammar, spelling, punctuation, and that the links all work, you are ready to put it to work for you. Be absolutely certain that the links to your pages and especially to your sales page all are working links.

The object is to get your eBook to as many different places as possible. Some of your readers will help you to get it to different places and each place it goes it becomes a new salesman for you.

Post your eBook to as many of the eBook directories as you can. Many will let you post it for free or will let you post a link on their site to your eBook. To find these sites go to Google and type in “ebook directories”. This is now your personal viral marketing system.

Once it gets going, you can’t stop it…..not that you want to stop it. It is certainly not a requirement but it is a good idea if you can create a cover for your eBook. Some sites offer free eBook cover templates. You just choose a pattern and then add the text. You can buy cover templates. There are even sites that will create a cover just for you and do it for free. Statistics prove that an eBook will be downloaded more when a nice cover is displayed. Search the internet for these sites.

The traditional book is here to stay. Advertising on paper is here to stay, as well. The marketing eBook as a viral salesman is here to stay, too. Don’t discount the value or underestimate its worth to you and your online marketing. It can be one of your best marketing tools and it is free.

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

In the beginning, e-mail was the way that viral marketing started. Since that day, viral marketing has gone from a marketing strategy to an art form and there are many ways to accomplish the objective of creating a successful viral marketing campaign. Seven of those ways are:

1.    E-mail: It was first but it is still around and still used. It is, however, getting a little harder to use as more and more government restrictions are placed on it. Still… it does work.

2.    Newsletters: This is an extension of e-mail but it a very effective tool. If you include enough valuable information, a good newsletter can drive up the number of visits to your website.

3.    Blogging: Providing the tools on your website to enable bloggers to interact with one another is a terrific way to get the message about your product of service out there and being talked about. Bloggers have their ears to the ground for new products and services.

4.    Chat Rooms: A chat room on your website can and does encourage interaction among your customers and that can’t be a bad thing. Also, you can use the chat room to schedule special events like having an expert available to answer questions on a given day at a given time.

5.    Tell-a-friend Script: If you add this with a statement saying that e-mail addresses supplied will never be shared with third parties, you can increase your potential customer list greatly.

6.    Video Clips: Including cool video clips on your website will keep the interest up and increase traffic.

7.    Flash Games: Although they are a little costly to start, they are an extremely effective tool to get your viral marketing campaign going. Once they are launched, they require nothing more from you.

It is a well known and widely accepted fact, that E-books, FREE E-books, are one of the best weapons in a viral marketing campaign arsenal.  Here are three good reasons why this is true today and will continue to be true for the foreseeable future:

1.    E-books are capable of reaching a large audience.  The only limiting factor is the enthusiasm or the participants.  Therefore, it is absolutely vital that your E-book contain something that people will want to share like timely information or humor.  Remember that people like to know something that the rest of the world needs to know. They will pass along something that makes them look like they are in-the-know. If your E-book contains material that people will want to share with their friends and family, they will pass it along to them… they will pass it along to others…and you will make money.

2.    E-books are a way to sell other products other than the one you originally targeted.  For example; if you are selling garden products, your customers could also be interesting in E-books about lawns, trees landscaping, etc.

3.    E-books are effective in building your reputation. It is an implied recommendation if you give a quality E-book and users willing pass on to others.

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.