How to Be a Viral Marketer

Viral marketing is the new buzz word—aptly described because viral marketing is all about creating a buzz. No one wants the flu or a computer virus, but everyone’s after a successful viral marketing campaign. It’s not just a fancy term for “word of mouth.”

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• A business
• A marketing campaign

1. Be creative. Put the time into a Youtube video as you might into a television ad. Provide information on the site to your full-fledged marketing campaign. A viral marketing program should be fun—it could lead to a scavenger hunt to sites all over the web.
2. If the program is to sell a product, make sure the product is readily available. Nothing is so popular as free merchandise. Consider giving something a way to help spread the word.
3. Make sure the marketing campaign can easily transfer from person to person—i.e. spreads like a virus. Provide graphics, links, and an email referrer option so the campaign can be easily forwarded.
4. Use social networks. Viral marketing is all about spreading the word from viewer to viewer. This is best done using everything offered by Web 2.0: blogs, podcasts, video, forums, and sites like Myspace.
5. Monitor how he viral marketing program is working: use sites like digg, delicious, technorati, or pubsub to see how many people are linking to or talking about the viral marketing plan.
6. Hire a street team of marketers. Don’t just wait for people to start talking about a marketing program, take the initiative. Hire bloggers and social networkers to link to the marketing program and get the ball rolling.
7. Once the ball is rolling, make sure to dive in: respond to inquiries and take part in the conversation.

Tips & Warnings

• Viral marketing usually works with a younger demographic—people who spend a lot of their time using technology: computers, video games, cell phones, etc. Tailor the campaign to the younger crowd.
• Stay away from spam emails, as it can give the company a bad name.