Viral Marketing for your visitors

Why your site doesn't need to be totally wacky

Viral marketing stereotypically involves using non-traditional methods to get the word out about a new product. In the offline world this may mean graffiti, advertising in underground publications, paying people to start buzz, or simply doing something completely wacky. Its not very hard to create a website that is completely nuts. I've seen many of them in the last decade. Unfortunately from a viral marketing point of view I don't think they effectively conveyed their message (was there a message?)

In the online world viral marketing means creating a website which builds its own traffic through word of mouth. This is quite different than traditional traffic methods such as banner ads or contextual search engine ads. (I'm not going to add search engine optimization to this list. Why? Because viral marketing can contribute to search engine optimization. People link to your site in blogs and online community sites dramatically boosting your PR and ultimately search engine rankings.)

Unlike the offline world viral marketing online doesn't have to involve wild out-of-the-box creativity. Sometimes its as simple as providing something useful for your customers. Notice all the web based tools that search engine optimizing firms host on their sites? Those aren't there just because they are really nice guys. I'm not linking to a commercial SEO company's website for free. If they have a damn useful tool.. maybe I will (also a great method for them to covertly gather information ;)

Perhaps you are thinking to yourself, "I'm already doing this." After all --what is the ultimate goal of the internet? People are looking for content -- just provide it.

Viral marketing is an alternative to search engine spamming. Some people turn to the "dark side" to bring traffic to their site. They use blackhat techniques to spam both e-mail and the web for their nutritional supplement pills. Other people create sites with real information about staying healthy and advertise their pills on the side -- perhaps even working it into their site's content. I'm not going to tell you the guy who took a visit to the "dark side" isn't making as much money as the "white hat" guy. I do guarantee you he's busting his ass fighting an uphill battle with Google.

Sites such as HotorNot.com exploded overnight and gave birth to innumerable copycats. I don't know if their was an intentional viral marketing campaign behind HotorNot. Regardless you can learn to emulate what made them a success.

If you are on a low budget but have created something you believe other people will go nuts over -- you need to start considering some viral marketing strategies. If your idea is new it may be very difficult to target specific keywords to gain a search engine ranking -- you need word of mouth.

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