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Is it really possible to let other people market your site for you? Because the main principle of viral marketing seems to be that it's possible to let other surfers/readers/webmasters promote your site, purely because they like a piece of your content you have created. So how is viral marketing created and why are some webmasters good at it while others fail to generate anything more than a few visitors?
One thing that I have noticed about all great viral content is that it's unique and original. Surfers today really have no interest in anything they have seen before so in order to stand out from the crowd you have to be different. That doesn't mean you can't offer a new angle on an old idea though, some of those campaigns have been very successful too.
A mistake that people often make when they create some kind of viral content is "overselling it". For example if you create a great info-graphic but your corporate branding is too prominent it's going to put people off. We don't mind being sold to but do it under the radar.
It's important to get the ball rolling at the start of the campaign. Even if you have the most "sharable" content ever you really have to get someone prominent (i.e. a blogger) to get your campaign off the ground. It's only after you hit a critical mass of people that your idea can start to snowball and this is when viral marketing becomes real value for money.
It's really important to measure your success with any kind of campaign. Unless you only plan to do one campaign (not advisable) how will you know what works/what doesn't unless you measure how many extra visitors/sales you get? It's not always easy to measure how successful your viral marketing efforts are but anything is better than nothing, knowledge is power when it comes to statistics.
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.
One thing that I have noticed about all great viral content is that it's unique and original. Surfers today really have no interest in anything they have seen before so in order to stand out from the crowd you have to be different. That doesn't mean you can't offer a new angle on an old idea though, some of those campaigns have been very successful too.
A mistake that people often make when they create some kind of viral content is "overselling it". For example if you create a great info-graphic but your corporate branding is too prominent it's going to put people off. We don't mind being sold to but do it under the radar.
It's important to get the ball rolling at the start of the campaign. Even if you have the most "sharable" content ever you really have to get someone prominent (i.e. a blogger) to get your campaign off the ground. It's only after you hit a critical mass of people that your idea can start to snowball and this is when viral marketing becomes real value for money.
It's really important to measure your success with any kind of campaign. Unless you only plan to do one campaign (not advisable) how will you know what works/what doesn't unless you measure how many extra visitors/sales you get? It's not always easy to measure how successful your viral marketing efforts are but anything is better than nothing, knowledge is power when it comes to statistics.
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.
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