6 Essenstials of Viral Marketing

6 Viral Seeding Must-Have Methods


You’ve cre­ated the most awe­some and incred­i­bly infec­tious piece of viral cre­ative in the his­tory of man, or at least you’d like to think so. But now what? Viral mar­ket­ing that nobody sees is hardly viral, so how do you “seed” your viral mes­sage, where should you post your con­tent, who should you send it to, how do you get it to “go viral?”

Here are 6 cri­te­ria that viral seed­ing meth­ods must pos­sess to be worth­while to social mar­keters. Depend­ing on the con­tent and its goals, the impor­tant of each of these cri­te­ria may vary, but they are present in some form in all great seed­ing plat­forms. After the list of cri­te­ria I also ana­lyze the best and most com­mon online viral seed­ing plat­forms and how they address my cri­te­ria.


Here are the criteria:
1. High Copy­ing Fidelity

Richard Dawkins (the father of memet­ics) says that memes must con­tain 3 traits to be suc­cess­ful and one of them is “copy­ing fidelity.” The idea must be capa­ble of copy­ing itself with a high degree of accu­racy, oth­er­wise it will soon become unrec­og­niz­able. A good seed­ing mech­a­nism will allow for this and pro­vide a way for users to copy and spread the viral cre­ative in or close to its orig­i­nal form. Tra­di­tional offline word of mouth tends to have lower copy­ing fidelity than online, because of the lack of copy-and-paste func­tion­al­ity, but even among dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tions meth­ods, some pro­vide greater accu­racy in repro­duc­tion than oth­ers. For instance, SMS gen­er­ally requires that a per­son retype the mes­sage before send­ing it to a new friends, whereas email has for­ward but­ton that sends ver­ba­tim copies.
2. Increased Reach

Another of the 3 cri­te­ria for suc­cess­ful memetic spread cited by Dawkins is “fecun­dity”. That is, the faster a meme repro­duces, the more suc­cess­ful it will be. For seed­ing this means that a worth­while medium will expose as large an audi­ence as pos­si­ble to the viral mes­sage. My research showed that one of the biggest moti­va­tions behind respon­dents deci­sion to share a piece of con­tent in a broad­cast fash­ion was the increased reach the plat­form allowed them.

3. Pro­lific Audience

Beyond sim­ply reach­ing as wide an audi­ence as pos­si­ble, the best viral seed­ing meth­ods will expose as pro­lific an audi­ence as pos­si­ble to the mes­sage. My research has shown that savvy social media users tend to share con­tent more often and with more peo­ple than nor­mal web users, mean­ing that social media sites attract a very pro­lific audi­ence that can spread your mes­sage fur­ther than the aver­age audience.

4. Per­ma­nence

The third cri­te­ria men­tioned by Dawkins is longevity, a meme will be more suc­cess­ful the longer each copy of it sur­vives. A good seed­ing plat­form will pro­vide for some level of per­ma­nence, so that users can refer back to the source of the mes­sage in the future.

5. Trust

Indi­vid­u­als are exposed to count­less organic memes and inten­tion­ally viral mes­sages every day and the web has accel­er­ated this trend. For a per­son to be attracted by a piece of con­tent and decide to spend some of their time in fur­ther­ing it, they must trust the source to some degree. Fran­cis Hey­lighen men­tioned author­ity as a memetic selec­tion cri­te­ria in his 1998 work on the sub­ject. Depend­ing on the type of con­tent, the level of trust required varies, for purely entertainment-based con­tent, the trust thresh­old is low, it is higher for instruc­tional con­tent and still high­est for news-type con­tent. In social com­mu­ni­ca­tions, typ­i­cally trust comes from author­ity (a well known news source) or social proof, obvi­ous signs that many of a person’s peers also trust the mes­sage. Com­mon exam­ples of social proof are the huge email-forward-chains that con­tain hun­dreds of email addresses, and the hun­dreds or thou­sands of votes a piece of con­tent will receive on a social vot­ing site.
6. Con­ver­sa­tion

One of the moti­va­tions most oft-cited by respon­dents to my sur­vey was the desire of the sharer to start a con­ver­sa­tion or receive feed­back about a piece of con­tent. Com­mu­nal recre­ation is a reoc­cur­ring theme in social and con­ta­gious com­mu­ni­ca­tions, includ­ing gos­sip, slang, rumors, oral tra­di­tion, and urban leg­ends. The best viral seed­ing plat­forms will allow for view­ers to com­ment on the con­tent, adding their own take on it, and fur­ther­ing the process of com­mu­nal recre­ation.

Based on the above cri­te­ria, here’s a list of the best viral seed­ing mediums:
Social News Vot­ing Sites

Sites like Digg, Red­dit, Sphinn, etc, are great places (per­haps the best) to seed viral con­tent because they cen­ter around links to the actual con­tent, allow­ing peo­ple to spread exact copies of the orig­i­nal mes­sage, they tend to have not only huge audi­ences, but extremely savvy and pro­lific social audi­ences, links on social news sites not only remain vis­i­ble indef­i­nitely, but they also allow social proof to build in the form of votes and users can com­ment on indi­vid­ual sto­ries (often these com­ments them­selves can be voted on as well).
Blogs and Blog­ger Outreach

Blogs are prob­a­bly the most obvi­ous exam­ple of a viral medium that addresses the above cri­te­ria: high-copying fidelity, per­ma­nence, con­ver­sa­tion, large and savvy audi­ences. For the mar­keter who wants to seed his con­tent, the com­pany blog may seem like an obvi­ous, if all together too-easy way to do it, and truth be told, unless your com­pany is very well known, its not going to do much good. The trick then becomes to get blog­gers with large (and pro­lific) audi­ences to men­tion your cre­ative. So make a list of blog­gers pop­u­lar (and trusted) among the savvi­est of your tar­get demo­graphic and build rela­tion­ships with them and ask if they’re open to spread­ing your content.
Microblog­ging Sites

Microblog­ging sys­tems like Twit­ter and Plurk are newer than vot­ing sites, but the have their own advan­tages for seed­ing viral con­tent. Per­ma­nent links, large and savvy audi­ences, ver­ba­tim copy­ing in the form of “retweet­ing”, social proof in the form of fol­lower totals and of course, plenty of con­ver­sa­tion and com­mu­nal recre­ation. Seed­ing con­tent on a site like Twit­ter can func­tion much like viral blog pro­mo­tion, develop your own high-reach pro­file and/or reach out to per­son­al­i­ties with built-in audiences.

Social Net­work­ing Sites

While my research shows that Face­book is not an extremely pop­u­lar source for virally shared con­tent, mar­keters would be remiss to dis­re­gard its poten­tial as a seed­ing mech­a­nism. Most of the above men­tioned cri­te­ria are present, par­tic­u­larly with Face­book groups and pages. The gen­eral social net­work audi­ence is not as savvy and pro­lific as the Digg or Twit­ter audi­ence, but the poten­tial audi­ence is much big­ger on a site like Facebook.

Social Media Sites

Sites like Youtube present an inter­est­ing inter­me­di­ary seed­ing plat­form, in that a video can be posted to the site and then the Youtube link can be pro­moted through the above-mentioned seed­ing mech­a­nisms. At its core how­ever, Youtube itself is a great plat­form that address the cri­te­ria I men­tioned, increas­ing a videos audi­ence on a site like Youtube gen­er­ally requires get­ting it into fea­tured or most-popular lists, a process which can be accom­plished in a wide range of ways.

Email

Email, of course, is the orig­i­nal online viral medium and for many audi­ences and mes­sages still the most pow­er­ful. What it lacks in a pro­lific audi­ence it more than makes up for in sheer poten­tial audi­ence size, as nearly every­one who uses the web uses email. The for­ward but­ton ensures copy­ing fidelity and for­ward head­ers pro­mote social proof. When a very main­stream audi­ence is desired, (as in elec­tions for exam­ple) email is often the best viral medium, with blogs and social net­work­ing sites com­ing in a close second.

Twitter grows your business? WHAT?!?!?!HOW?!?!?!

Can Twitter actually help my business or is it a complete waste of my valuable time? This was the very question I asked myself only a few months back.

Perhaps you’ve pondered the same?

When people I respect started singing the praises of Twitter, I decided to give it a go. At first I just didn’t get it. However, after a short while I was shocked at the level of access to high profile individuals I was able to achieve.

This article reveals how bestselling authors and business professionals use Twitter to grow their businesses and reveals ideas you can employ to achieve Twitter success.

First, What is Twitter Again?

“Twitter is instant messaging made available to the public,” stated talk show host and author Hugh Hewitt.

I think that’s a fair starting point. I’ve heard others call Twitter a micro-blogging platform.

Here’s what you need to know. According to the State of the Twittersphere report, each day 5 to 10 thousand new people join Twitter. Current estimates of total users top out around 5 million. That’s a lot of opportunity.

Twitter allows you to post updates (called Tweets) as often as you want (and limited to 140 characters). When you follow other people on Twitter, you see their tweets. When they follow you, they see your tweets.

It’s a constant stream of communication. The good news is you can turn it on or off as often as you like. Twitter also keeps a public record of all updates, which can be mined with Twitter Search.
Why High-Profile People Use Twitter

Twitter is not just a fad. When very high profile folks begin evangelizing Twitter, it’s worth closer examination. Here’s what some of those gurus told me:

Duct Tape Marketing founder John Jantsch identified three big advantages of Twitter, “(1) I get great insight when I ask questions, (2) let’s face it, I get traffic and (3) people on Twitter spread my thoughts to new places.”

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com said, “We’ve found that Twitter has been a great way for us to connect on a more personal level with our employees and customers. We use it to help build our brand, not drive direct sales. It’d be like asking how does providing a telephone number for customer service translate into new business when they are mostly non-sales-related calls. In the long term, Twitter helps drive repeat customers and word of mouth, but we’re not looking to it as a way of driving immediate sales.”

Bestselling author David Meerman Scott said, “I have personally connected with hundreds of people I otherwise wouldn’t have, and I booked an interview on NPR and a big daily newspaper using Twitter.”

Copyblogger’s own Brian Clark said, “Twitter Search is an amazing way to see what people are saying about your products or services. For example, I’ll do searches for Thesis Theme and people will be asking questions about our WordPress Theme. I’ll use the reply function to answer the question, which has led to direct sales. Plus, my answer creates awareness of Thesis for others that follow me. It’s a form of constructive promotion.”

Be sure to check out this Business Week article that surveyed 18 CEOs and how they’re using Twitter to help their businesses.
Practical Ways Twitter Can Help Your Business

This is where it gets interesting. A lot of people are doing some very innovate things with Twitter. Here’s some of their stories.

The Twitter Plan

Cindy King, an international sales specialist, saw a huge boost in business inquires by implementing a strategic Twitter plan.

“Following the right people on Twitter was key. There are some people very gifted at building relationships on Twitter. As I followed these online community builders, I realized that some of them are also excellent direct response copywriters. They get their Twitter followers to take action,” said King.

“Light bulbs went off, and I spent a weekend putting together a tweet marketing plan and entered in 6 weeks worth of tweets, 5 a day, using TweetLater. I used a mindmap, created categories, varied times on tweets and used BUDurls so I could track results and improve my tweet plan the next time around. That was a month ago,” explained King.

When King finds a spare minute between projects, she logs into Twitter and watches what folks are talking about. When she Tweets, about 90 percent of the time she presents useful information and resources to her followers. The remaining tweets are surveys and questions. Following this strategy, King saw an 800 percent increase in inquiries about her business after she setup her Twitter campaign.

Getting In Front of High Profile People

B2B copywriter Terri Rylander took a much different approach. At first she was very skeptical of Twitter. “I looked at it but couldn’t figure out why people would continually send out messages about the size of a text message, unless they were a teenager. Twitter was for sending updates they said. I don’t have time for updates, and besides, who would care?” said Rylander.

She later came across a peer in her industry that was using Twitter and suggested Rylander follow her on Twitter. “That’s when I discovered Twitter as a business tool. I’ve been in my particular niche for over 10 years and know who the players are (though they don’t know me). When I checked who she was following on Twitter, there they all were! It read like a “Who’s Who” list.”

Rylander joined Twitter and began following and interacting with the people she respected. “Other than a cold call on the phone or e-mail, I would never have the chance to get my name in front of vendors, industry analysts, and industry experts. I’ve had a number of Twitter conversations that have also led to personal conversations.”

To stay top of mind with experts, she offers interesting links, responds to tweets, and posts her thoughts for conversation at least a few times a day.

Getting Traffic and Leads

Pam O’Neil, VP of Marketing at BreakingPoint said, “Twitter has all but replaced our PR agency as a large percentage of our followers are press and analysts. A writer for ZDNet wrote about us and linked to us based on something we tweeted and that resulted in a huge spike in web traffic and at least one deal with a major service provider.”

Mike Damphousse of Green Leads said, “Twitter is new to us. That said, in a few short weeks we’ve had definite increase in all sorts of traffic. Out of the normal inbound leads, the number has increased 15% and two of the inbounds are now active pipeline opportunities. We’ve found one extremely valuable partner relationship. We are also building PR relationships, although finding the contacts is a bit of a chore.”

Are you beginning to see the potential here?
A Few Tools to Help Your Twitter Experience

Twitter has a whole world of available support applications you can employ to gain the most of the service for your business. Here’s a few of my favorites:

TwitterFox: This Firefox web browser plugin allows you to view Tweets within your web browser (in a popup menu). This is very handy and eliminates the need to constantly go to Twitter.com.

TweetLater: This powerful service allows you to schedule tweets (much like you would schedule emails). Another very powerful feature is the ability to receive email digests of keyword activity in the Tweetosphere. This allows you to join a conversation or track topics and trends.

Ping.fm: If you have accounts with many services, such as LinkedIn and Facebook, this amazing site allows you to post updates across ALL of your social media sites in one single step.

Twitter for Facebook: If you are on Facebook, this application forwards your Twitter updates directly to Facebook as status updates.

And just in case you get addicted to Twitter, here’s some advice from one of the leading authorities on Twitter. Chris Brogan says, “Most people who see Twitter the first time either flat-out ‘get it,’ or they say, ‘why bother?’ Here’s what people miss. They believe one should read every single update that rolls across your screen of choice. Don’t. Just let it roll past like a stream.”

So what are you waiting for? Go check out Twitter and report back here with your experience.

Has Twitter already helped your business? If so, tell us your story.

What is an effective Social Media Consultant??

In order to be effective at social marketing, “You have to be part sociologist and part salesman…. being extremely creative is arguably just as important” says The Matador Media. Social media experts also have an uncanny, intuitive grasp of how the social web’s collective-mind works and how it will likely react to any given campaign, headline, image or idea. How? They’ve witnessed thousands of successes and failures – both their own and others- which give them an expansive databank of experience to analyze and construct hypotheses from. If you haven’t gotten so deep into the fabric of the social web that it permeates your consciousness – allowing you to reliably tap in to the higher, “genius” brain-circuits of creativity and intuition, on demand – you might not be a social media expert, yet!

CPM vs. CPC vs. CPA

For those of you that have been using the Internet as an advertising medium, you know that there are various pricing models available to you. However, there are a lot of people just entering the fray and so I thought I'd take a quick look at the 3 categories that cover 99% of the advertising currently in use. The oldest is the cost-per-thousand (CPM) category. More recently, cost-per-click (CPC) stepped in to the ring and currently, in my opinion, holds the crown for being the most effective. And the latest fad is cost-per-action (CPA) which is still in its infancy.

Cost-Per-Thousand
CPM pricing was actively promoted by the big portals such as Yahoo and AOL. It was a great revenue generator for them that had the added bonus of being largely risk free. That is, the advertiser did all the creative work and made the payments while the only thing the portals had to do was display the ad as often as they could until the advertiser's budget was exhausted. It's this one-sided nature of the CPM model that has pushed advertisers to seek an alternative that can offer them some sort of guarantee of performance. Sometimes this is also called "online media buys" or "impression buying".

Cost-Per-Action
CPA then seems to offer the best guarantee for advertisers. After all, with such a set up, the advertiser only pays when the prospect has performed a specific action such as registering or requesting information. And just to be explicit, the upside of this is that an ad can be displayed and clicked on many, many times with no cost to the advertiser. The problem here is that now all the risk has been shifted to the publisher since they now must give up their ad inventory and hope that the advertiser's message is compelling enough to result in "actions".

Cost-Per-Click aka PPC aka Paid Search
CPC sits in the middle of the online pricing spectrum. It involves risk from the advertiser's side in that they pay for every click on their ad. This forces them to make sure that the ad is relevant to what is being offered so that a click has a good chance of turning in to an action. At the same time, the publisher takes on the responsibility of displaying the ad in appropriate places so that it will receive clicks. No clicks, no revenue. It's a very simple formula for both sides.

This sharing of risk and the simplicity in measuring performance is why CPC has become so popular. It has been so wildly successful that Google generates most of it's billions in revenue by playing the middleman between advertisers and publishers. In the case of the ads on the search engine results, Google actually is the publisher. An entire industry has sprung up around this model where big name companies pay search engine marketers to handle their advertising campaigns. These CPC campaigns are so successful that there has been a measurable shift in advertising spend with more and more going toward the online world.

The one problem with cost-per-click type ads is that they're subject to click fraud. That is, it is possible to build networks of people that click on ads with no interest in the product or service being sold. The motivation behind such activities can be to drive up advertising costs to force certain companies off the playing field or it can be an attempt to generate revenue by clicking on ads that appear on a publisher's site that is involved with the fraud. Still, Google has done a good enough job of combating this fraud that there has yet to be any sign of slowing in the number of advertising dollars being pumped in to CPC.

Why you should create headlines first, content second

An amazing film or magazine article can overcome a bad title. But online content with a bad headline will never get clicked on — let alone quickly Dugg or retweeted. The overabundance of good web content leaves people with little attention to spare on anything but the most tempting, succulent descriptions.

Wait for the epiphany where the perfect headline appears “in lights,” then go write your viral piece.

Too often… when working with friends and clients on viral content ideas… we’d get excited about a cool concept that can’t easily be expressed in under 65-or-so characters and then spend hours creating the content. As a very last step, they turn to the headline box and struggle to come up with something even passably awkward. Inevitably, the piece bombed… and left them with a terrible social media hangover after all that hard, creative work. Many repeated disappointments inspired me to change my workflow:

Brainstorm a list of incredible, magnetic headlines first. Once you have a stash of golden, “sure-fire winner” headlines, then go create the content that unquestionably fulfills the promise made by each of them.

Not every “cool” content concept has potential for a winning headline. By finding that out first, and then eliminating the ideas that are unlikely to be clicked on and shared – you can focus your energy on creating hit content for those headlines that do have a fighting chance.