It’s Time to Go Viral! October 27, 2009
Key Features of Viral Marketing
You have probably heard somewhere that is important to get viral marketing for your business. You may have a vague idea of what this means but if you don’t fully understand it then you’re not going to be very good at it. Luckily, this is actually something that’s fairly easy for most business people to understand. The key features of viral marketing are that it relies on existing social networking sites, it targets the key users of those sites and it is designed to develop brand recognition for your business.
The core feature of viral marketing is that it relies on existing social networks to spread the word about your business to a large group of people. Viral marketing can therefore take place through any major social networking channel. YouTube is a popular choice because there are so many users on this site (and also because great video content is easy to get people interested in). Twitter and Facebook are other sites that might be used for viral marketing.
Simply being active on these social networking sites isn’t going to make your content go viral, though. To get a lot of people to pay attention to what you’re marketing, you need to get the attention and support of the key users on those sites. These are the leaders on the sites that everyone else seems to listen to. You may target the most active users on a particular site (such as the top Twitter users which can be found by checking out directories like WeFollow which rank Twitter users). Alternatively, you may target the most active users in your specific niche area (such as the top personal finance experts on YouTube).
The goal of what you’re doing when you create and spread content through viral marketing is to create and establish a brand for yourself. That’s why the content that you create for viral marketing is so important. You don’t just want to create content that will make people laugh and cause them to share it on the web. You want to create attention-getting content that also brands your business and allows people to associate the content with your core goals and business beliefs.
There you have it - the key features of viral marketing. First, create content that will brand your business in a positive way. Then get active on the major existing social networking sites (which notably will change over time as new sites emerge). And finally, make sure that you specifically target your marketing to the users on those sites who are most popular and who are therefore capable of making your content go viral on the web.
This article brought to you by Real Deal Technologies, an SEO company.
