Viral Marketing: How To Use Viral Content to Get People Talking About You

By Zeke Camusio

Viral marketing is, without any doubt, the most effective marketing tool ever. Why isn’t everybody doing viral marketing then?

Two reasons:

- Most people “don’t get it”.
- Creating a successful viral marketing campaign is extremely hard. Most viral content is created by accident and most content created with viral goals in mind never goes viral.

So we know that you might have to launch about 10 campaigns for 3 or 4 of them to become highly viral.

That’s OK. Those 3 or 4 campaigns will give your company so much exposure that will make the whole thing worth your while. And the more content you create, the better you’ll become at figuring out what campaigns have better chances at becoming viral and having thousands of people spreading the word about them.

So, what kind of content is more likely to become viral? There are different kinds and these are the ones that have the best chances:

1. Funny Content.
Videos, jokes and animations. Make people laugh out loud and they will love to tell their friends about your stuff.

2. Controversial Content.
Controversial content is very likely to attract attention.

3. Useful Information and Tools.
If you provide people with a very useful resource that they can’t find anywhere else, you are sure to get a lot of people recommending your site to their friends.
Now that you know what kind of content is more likely to become viral, let’s talk about some of the things that you can do to increase the chances of getting the buzz that you need.

4. Encourage People to Tell their Friends.
Sometimes all you need to do to get people telling your friends about your content is to ask them. Include a “Tell Your Friends” link in your viral campaigns. If you posted content, allow people to reprint it–actually, ask them to, as long as they mention the original source.

5. Capitalize on Trends.
Spend time on Digg, Reddit, YouTube and StumbleUpon learning what kind of things people talk about. Read the news and understand trends. All this will give you a much better idea of what’s the next thing that could go viral and take advantage of it.

6. Make it Short.
It doesn’t matter if your content is a video, audio or text. The best way to kill the viral component of a campaign is to make it really long.

7. Don’t Make it Look Like an Ad.
Some people can’t resist putting a link to their websites all over their viral content. This is a big mistake. People don’t like promoting your company; but they do like sending cool stuff to their friends.

Now get out there, create viral content and let other people spread the word about it!

About The Author:

Zeke Camusio is a serial entrepreneur. His sixth endeavor, The Outsourcing Company, is an Internet marketing agency with offices in Aspen, CO and New York. Zeke writes an entrepreneurship and Internet marketing blog called Let's Do It! Check it out here: www.TheOutsourcingCompany.com/blog.

A big thanks to Zeke Camusio from Mike Michalowicz, Author of The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur

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