Getting Viral with Social Media– It’s Good for You!
A virus that exiles you to the couch for a week with a box of tissues? Bad. A virus that arrives in your inbox as a lottery message? Worse! A "viral" campaign that gets the word out about your product, cheaply and quickly? Great! Viral marketing has become the #1 way to advertise your product at little or no cost. The premise is simple: You post an interesting article, offer a nifty gadget, create a short, entertaining video – and people use their social networks to pass along the cool content to their friends, who in turns pass it along to their friends, who in turn…well, you get the idea. They come for the gadget, they stay to look around your site… Very shortly, you’ve reached your target audience without having to do too much work.
Great, you’re thinking – but where do I start?
Don’t reinvent the (social) wheel
To effectively use viral marketing to increase traffic to your site, don’t reinvent the wheel. Use existing social networking sites to create connections and links with a target audience. Some of the oft-quoted sites are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, and YouTube, but many others exist, such as CafeMom, Orkut, Hi5, and Zaadz. Research the existing sites to find ones that meet your needs. Once you’ve joined, start building relationships and networks. Post something catchy and entertaining to get people in the sharing kind of mood. Your contacts aren’t necessarily going to go out of their way to share your product info, but they will be very motivated to share your funny video or compelling gadget. www.snapily.com created a humorous, one-minute video and posted it on YouTube. As of this writing, the video had over 100,000 viewings! This viral sharing leads to more hits, and more clients.
Easy does it
Your clients need to be able to advertise your product easily . In fact, this is at the heart of viral marketing. Content on your site should be broken down into bite-size chunks, with a “Share this” gadget that allows the customers to simply click and share the article with their friends. Like a virus, the content should be able to spread quickly and be hard to stop! (Only this one doesn’t shut down their hard drive…) A simple link is the easiest way to go, and if you are including content that needs to be downloaded, make sure it is in a user-friendly format. By using YouTube, for example, like our friends at snapily.com, you’ve enabled your content to be shared through email, Facebook, or any other social media site with one click.
You Con-du-it!
Entice your audience to come visit your website using your Conduit community toolbar. With its never-a-dull-moment gadget collection and ease of sharing functionality, the toolbar is guaranteed to drive traffic to your site. Go to www.conduit.com and create the toolbar (for free!). The toolbar is branded with your own personal logo, and then you can customize it any which way you want. In addition to a quick link to your site, you can add games, the local weather report, a radio player…have fun with it!
Next, place it in your product site or social networking site. You now have a mini-website where users can download the toolbar (also free!). They can then share any part of the toolbar with their friends – whether it’s a cool gadget or an interesting update about your product. Every time your community toolbar is shared, it leads to more downloads, which equals more visitors to your site.
Sign in? No thanks!
Your clients will be turned off if they are asked to sign in or register in order to share your product. Make sure they can promote it with one click – no page-long forms asking them their name, street address, birthday, and cousin’s best friend’s maiden name.
I’m feelin’ the love! (or something)
To get your marketing campaign to go viral, get people talking. Think about the advertisements that you remember. The concept may have had nothing to do with the product (remember those e*Trade monkeys?), but it got everyone talking. Posting content on your site that makes people stop and think will encourage them to share it with their friends. (“Did you see what he posted? I’ve got to send it to….”). Whether people thought the Snapily video was clever or coarse, it definitely got them talking, and sharing.
Be a pal – share
Don’t be greedy – the relationships you form on your social networking sites should be two-way streets. If one of your friends or contacts posts something cool, do your part to make it viral! They will be much more likely to return the favor by advertising your content.
It’s a viral, viral world. An effective viral marketing campaign does involve some planning – making connections, ensuring your content is share-able – but the reward is a little or no-cost advertising campaign that can reach around the world. And probably in less than 80 days!