CompuKol Connection » Viral Marketing

Making Your Content Go Viral

Carolyn Cohn — Sat, 07 May 2011 09:00:00 +0000

Going viral is a really good thing when it comes to content that you publish and share online. You want the content to be read by millions and shared by millions more. How does that happen?

What does “viral” mean online?

If content goes viral, it means that it becomes very popular in an extremely short time. The topic of how to make content go viral has found its way into school curricula, conferences, and marketing plans. Viral content happens for a variety of reasons.

the content is brilliant and very creative.
The content is very exciting and engaging
It is something unique that has never been seen before.
It is something that happens accidentally.

Many businesses have tried and succeeded at coming up with ideas that go viral (as part of their marketing strategy). However, it is uncertain whether businesses that have succeeded at producing viral content have a fool-proof formula that will guarantee a result of viral content over and over again. An extraordinarily important element to content going viral (whether it is written content or video content) is that the audience member forwards it to his or her friends.

Human beings have a need to share what they enjoy with other people who mean something to them. The sharing can be in the form of a movie, a joke, a place that was visited, or dynamic and compelling content online. Another thing to bear in mind when it comes to making content go viral is the timing. If the timing is off, it won’t have the desired effect. You need to make sure that when you share compelling and exciting content, you are using the most appropriate social media channel for your purposes. This is dependent on your niche. If you are in a niche that is interested in books, send them an eBook. If on the other hand, they prefer audio or video media, share that type instead. Make sure that whatever you share, it is easy for them to access, enjoy and share with others.

Why does something go viral?

The one and only reason that a particular online medium will go viral is because of the content. That should always be your main focus. Making something go viral should never be your main focus. It is a bonus if you are creating effective content. Your content should be of the highest quality. If your content is good enough and compelling enough, people will want to share it. Nobody has the power to make people share your content if they don’t want to. It all depends on the quality and the magnetism. As always, you must concentrate your content efforts with WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) in mind. In other words, what are you going to do to solve your readers’ problems? If your content touches them in that way, they will find a great deal of value in it and will want to share it with their friends so that they can reap the benefits also.

The following are tips that will help your content to go viral:

No hard selling: People don’t appreciate it if you are trying to sell something to them. The most important purpose of your viral online marketing campaign is to entertain your audience. The effective viral campaign is one that tells an interesting story. You should be as creative as you can.
Issue a statement that causes an emotional reaction: You need to demonstrate your commitment to what you are doing through your campaign. If you don’t get some sort of emotional reaction out of your audience members, you are doing something wrong. They will never want to share something that is boring to them. Why would they want to torture other people. It is enough that they were tortured with boredom.
Throw them a curve ball: One of the key ingredients to your content becoming viral is the element of surprise. If you give them something that they didn’t expect, it will get them excited and it will get them thinking. That is exactly what you want to do.
Make them want to interact: It is not nearly enough for you to make a connection with your audience. You need to give them the sense of ownership of your ideas. If they don’t have that sense of ownership, they will never share it with anyone. You should give them open-ended statements that compel them to react and reach out. The more interesting and thought provoking your ideas are, the more interested people will be to get involved in the discussion.

Conclusion

Your online interactions need to constantly be in a state of increasing momentum. Your content must always be fresh, informative, exciting and surprising. A good way to think about the ownership aspect of that content is to consider the idea that once you have written and shared it, it no longer belongs only to you. It is the property of anyone and everyone who want to be a part of it. Before you know it, you and your business will be household names.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team and don’t forget to “like” our Facebook page for additional, valuable content.

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Making Holiday Buzz Through Social Media

Carolyn Cohn — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 10:00:00 +0000

The year is flying. The holidays are almost here. Now is the perfect time to start planning your social media marketing strategy. Millions of marketers are taking advantage of the opportunity to create buzz. How are they doing it?

It certainly is not too early to start to work on leveraging social media to its full potential to create a buzz for your business. Many business owners will be offering online discounts and other extraordinary offers that will attract customers and make them want to spend money. Many of those business owners will be using social media for their businesses for the first time ever. The following are tips on how to get started:

Choosing a platform: Of course, the first thing that must be considered when executing your social media marketing strategy is which social media platform you want to use. A great and inexpensive way to start your social media marketing campaign is by using Twitter or Facebook. You may also want to consider creating and writing a blog or a forum to reach out to people.
Offer something that is value-added to your customers: The more value you offer to your customers, the more they will want to connect with you. There are several ways to offer value, including coupons, posting discounts, etc. Of course, in order to get people interested enough to want to buy what you are selling, you must write about more than just your products and/or services. This is the perfect opportunity to offer valuable and educational information in the form of blogs, tweets, and Facebook messages. People love to learn new things and by offering information with no strings attached, you are strengthening your relationship with them and building trust and credibility in the relationship.
Spread the value around: Make sure that you distribute the time that you spend on social media evenly. After you have chosen the social media channels that you want to use, share your valuable content to those channels and spend an equal amount of time on each. You should not fall into the trap of getting caught up in one particular social media channel because you won’t have enough time to devote to the other social media channels. There is only so much of your time that you can use for social media in general.
Interact as much as possible with your customers: Think about your interactions with your customers as though you are at a holiday party and you are mingling with various people. In the case of your online interactions, you should start discussions, get involved in debates, promote discussions, and respond to feedback. That is exactly how you achieve success for your business through social media. The heart of the interaction is social.
Attract viral attention: The holiday season is the perfect time to get your content to go viral. Social media empowers your customers and makes them feel that they want to tell other people about whom they care about your business, what you have to offer and what’s in it for them. During the holiday season, people are not as stressed and will, therefore, be more inclined to get involved with social media, which include sharing what they find interesting with their friends, family, and business associates.

Conclusion

This is a great time of year to use social media to strengthen your business. As you look at past holiday seasons, you can identify what worked and what didn’t work and make the most out of your past accomplishments to strengthen your business successes going forward. Although you have used social media all year to establish and maintain relationships with other people, using it to it create a buzz during the holiday season is special and will really do a great deal to end the year in a wonderful way and pave the way for a successful new year.

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How to Spread Good Business Ideas

Carolyn Cohn — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 15:57:45 +0000

You ask yourself why some ideas spread like wildfire and others don’t go anywhere at all. You may have amazing ideas that you want to communicate to a wide audience as quickly as possible.

We are currently in the middle of a communication revolution. With that in mind, the issue of understanding how to make ideas spread is more important than ever. This issue has been carefully analyzed and conclusions have been drawn.

The Tipping Point

The Tipping Point (a book written by Malcolm Gladwell, who is a Canadian journalist and pop sociologist) explains the concept of applying the principles of epidemics to the spread of ideas.

The Tipping Point has three rules:

1) The Power of Context: Environment contributes to the spreading of ideas. For example, law enforcement will crack down on small crimes in order to prevent bigger ones.

2) The Stickiness Factor: Just as some diseases are more contagious than others, some ideas stick with and affect people more than others.

3) The Power of the Few: There are very few people who have the great power to influence many people. There are mavens (masters of information), connectors (people who know a great number of other people) and salespeople (powerful communicators). These categories represent those influencers.

The Power of the Many

If you turn around The Power of the Few rule, you might ask “Why focus only on convincing a small number of influential people when there are so many to influence?” Influential people, who may be resistant to new ideas, are connected to many other people who may be more open and easier to bring around to your way of thinking.

Starting the spread of ideas is like a broadcast search. Your best approach is to shoot your ideas to as many people as possible and thus create the possibility of reaching both influential and non-influential people. Sometimes your ideas will reach the people whom you want to reach and sometimes they won’t. Your ideas have the chance of sticking to anyone who is willing to listen.

It is a known fact that people are influenced by others around them. Viral ideas are the most important type in marketing. Why would you bother to spend a lot of money on advertising when you could get other people to spread your ideas around for free? Your big challenge, however, is to get your ideas to go viral. More difficult still, is to get your ideas to go viral with any degree of predictability or consistency.

You wouldn’t risk a significant product launch on the small chance that you might save your advertising budget. That is just too unpredictable. Your business (and all other businesses) will not become successful by saving on marketing. Your business will become successful by selling your products.

In order to get your ideas to spread, not only do you need to get people to believe in them but you also need to get a majority of people to believe in them. Ideas don’t live in a vacuum; they are distributed and shared through interaction.

Three Conditions of a Viral Idea

1) Susceptibility: The idea either has to be powerful or the people who are predisposed to it need to have contact with it. A great idea is only as good as the timing. A good product will always succeed eventually, however, sometimes it is an instant hit and sometimes it takes a while to catch on.

2) Connectedness: The people who support and believe in the idea have to be able to connect with other people. In other words, your target audience should be broad. Additionally, make sure that the demographic of your target group isn’t misleading. For example, a young target group is not valuable unless there are young people who connect with each other.

3) Majority: Because clusters of people in a network are connected, they have an influence over each other. Who connects with whom initially is really not important. A majority doesn’t rule, it convinces. A marketing campaign must be strong enough and large enough to form a majority in a network. Once that majority is formed, it can spread the word.

A good example of this is Facebook, which was first limited to Harvard University. After that, it was limited to university students at other schools. At that point, it was able to take over the world. Most likely, if Facebook had originally been available to the general public, it wouldn’t have gained the momentum that would have been required.

Practical Marketing Implications

Mass media: The most effective way to reach the specific people whom you need is to reach a large number of them inexpensively. Which would you prefer, a client meeting or a presentation at a conference? If you have a client meeting, you have a chance of influencing a small number of people. However, if you give a presentation at a conference, you will not only reach your prospective clients but might also influence others who might positively affect your prospective client’s decision.

Don’t over-target: If you combine a few general targeting parameters, you will have a strong enough of a message to reach its intended goal. It is a good idea to build your target to fit your budget. However, there is no reason to leave people out if you don’t have to.

Encourage word-of-mouth: Social media strategies are a wonderful method of extending a marketing campaign as long as you remember that those strategies are not replacements for traditional marketing. For the maximum outcome, you need to integrate mass media and other types of marketing communications.

Our world of social networks offers great opportunities to boost the effectiveness and efficiency of traditional marketing campaigns. However, the solid standard of a great idea, good integration, and efficient buying will never grow old.

We are pleased to provide you the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

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Internet Marketing Techniques Explained

Michael Cohn — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:46:13 +0000

The world is being surrounded by internet. People generally have the intention of attaching everything of their daily life to internet. So the co-relation of the terms promotion and marketing is bound to happen.

What is Internet Marketing in a nut shell?
Internet marketing, also referred to as web marketing, online marketing, or eMarketing, is the marketing of products or services over the Internet.

The real scope of internet marketing lies beyond the website building or operating through it. The strategies that relate to it include each and every aspect of online advertising services, products, and the websites that include the email marketing, market research, and direct sales.

Internet marketing follows a few important concepts. These are as follows:

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
This is a type of marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in Search Engine Result Pages. This is done through the use of paid inclusion, contextual advertising, and paid placement, and search engine optimization.

Blog Marketing
Blog marketing is internet marketing by way of web logs (blogs). Blogs are different than corporate websites because they contain daily or weekly postings, many times around a single subject. Many corporations use blogs to foster a dialog with customers so that they can explain the features of their products and services.

Email Marketing
This is a type of direct marketing that uses Email to communicate commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. Emails are sent with the purpose of:
• Strengthening the relationship of the business person with his/her previous and current clients to create customer loyalty
• Acquiring new clients or convincing existing clients to purchase something
• Adding advertisements sent by other businesses to their clients.

Viral Marketing
Viral marketing is a marketing technique that creates brand awareness by using social networks that already exist. Viral marketing increases brand awareness and achieves other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathologic and computer viruses. Information can be spread by word-of-mouth or it can be enhanced by the network effects of the internet. Viral promotions might be in the form of video clips, Ebooks, images, text messages, or brandable software.

Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is a term that describes the act of using social networks, online communities, blogs, wikis, and other collaborative internet forms of media for marketing, sales, public relations, and customer service. Common social media marketing tools include Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube.

Article Marketing
Article marketing is advertising in which businesses write short articles related to their industry. These articles are made available for publication and distribution in the marketplace. Each article contains a bio box and byline that include references and contact information for the author’s business. Well-written content articles released for free distribution have the potential of increasing the business’ credibility within its market as well as attracting new customers.

Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is an internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts.

Geo Marketing
Geo targeting (in internet marketing) and geo marketing are the methods of determining the geolocation (the physical location) of a website visitor with geolocation software and delivering customized content to that visitor based on his or her location, such as country, region/state, city, metro code/zip code, organization, Internet Protocol (IP) address, ISP, or other criteria.

There are pros and cons to the different types of internet marketing:

Advantages
Internet marketing can reach a wide audience for a small fraction of traditional advertising budgets.

Internet Marketing allows consumers to research and purchase products and services at their own convenience. Therefore, businesses have the advantage of appealing to consumers in a medium that can bring results quickly.

Most components of an Internet marketing campaign can be tracked, measured, and tested and thus marketers can determine what information interests the audience most.

Because efficiency, exposure, and response of internet media can be tracked much more easily than off-line media—through the use of web analytics, for instance—internet marketing can instill a more profound sense of accountability for advertisers.

Limitations
Internet marketing requires that customers use newer technologies instead of traditional media. Low-speed internet connections are another limitation. If companies build complex or large websites, people connected to the internet via dial-up connections or mobile devices experience serious delays in the delivery of the content.

From the customer’s perspective, the idea that the products or services that are being offered are virtual, can be a limitation. However, the liberal return policies and in-store pick up options do improve the situation for the customer.

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Viral Marketing – What it Is and How to Apply it to Your Business

Michael Cohn — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:04:38 +0000

In our world, where the most available medium is the Internet, Viral Marketing is a very effective form of advertising. Before the Internet, this type of advertising would have been spread by your customers through word of mouth.

Viral Marketing Defined

What does a virus have to do with marketing? Viral Marketing describes any strategy that encourages people to communicate a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, if not millions of people.

Outside of the Internet, Viral Marketing has been referred to as "word of mouth," "creating a buzz," "leveraging the media," and "network marketing." But on the Internet, for better or worse, it’s called "Viral Marketing."

Why Use Viral Marketing?

The purpose of Viral Marketing is to entice customers with a product or service that you can give them for a trial period or for free altogether. The attraction to the customer is that there are no strings attached. However, before the customers can use the free product or service, they have to sign up through your website. Now, you have a win-win situation. The customer is now able to use the product and you have generated a new lead for your business. Your list of leads sends messages to people who have experienced your product and will be able to tell their friends about it. Subsequently, those friends will tell other friends about your products and services. If your customers have had a positive experience with your products and services, most likely, they will become loyal customers who keep returning to you in addition to bringing in more prospects.

There are various Viral Marketing techniques from which you can choose. The choices are having emails sent to people to pass onto their friends, interesting videos to be watched and to be followed by link to your website, articles of interesting topics, or blog posts that talk about your business. Just like a virus, as the Email is transmitted from one person to another, the attached message is transmitted with it. On the Internet, one strategically placed message can reach millions of people with one click of the mouse. On the other hand; however, you need to be careful of the types of messages that you put on the Internet. Because of the extremely rapid pace of the transmission of information online, negative messages will spread just as quickly as positive ones, which can potentially be damaging to your business.

Key Points of Viral Marketing Strategy

Some Viral Marketing strategies work better than others, and few strategies work as well as the simple Hotmail.com strategy. Here are some key Viral Marketing strategy points that you should include in your strategy. A Viral Marketing strategy doesn’t necessarily have to contain all of these elements, but the more elements it embraces, the more powerful the results are likely to be.

Give away valuable products or services
The majority of Viral Marketing programs give away valuable products or services in order to attract the attention of the existing and potential customers. Free Email services, free information, free software programs that perform sophisticated functions but not as much as you get in the "pro" version. Cheap or inexpensive may generate a wave of interest, but free will generally accomplishes it much quicker. Free attracts visitors. Visitors then see other desirable things that you are selling, and, you start to earn money. Visitors bring valuable Email addresses, advertising revenue, and Ecommerce sales opportunities.
Make people feel something
A most important strategy is to create a very strong emotion. You need to have an opinion, to express an idea with commitment and dedication. You want people’s blood to be pumping with excitement. Viral Marketing is 100% about emotions.
Do something unexpected
This is self-explanatory. If you want people to notice your campaign, you have to do something that stands out – something unexpected. Forget about trying to promote your products as just being great – everybody does that. Forget about trying to make it look cool – everybody else has already gone down that road.
Provide for easy transfer to others
Viruses only spread when they’re easy to transmit. The medium that carries your marketing message must be easy to transfer and replicate: Email, website, graphic, software download. Viral Marketing works very well on the Internet because instant communication has become so easy and inexpensive. Digital formats make copying simple. From a marketing standpoint, you must simplify your marketing message so that it can be transmitted easily and without degradation. Use compelling short messages and place them at the bottom of every Email message.
Do not try to make bad advertisements
One of the biggest mistakes that companies make is thinking that Viral Marketing is just advertisements that people share – it is not. Viral Marketing is all about a good story. Forget about you, your product, or your company. Focus entirely on creating a good and interesting story. Of course, you can add your product into the mix, but it must not be the most important thing.
Have a good understanding of your customers
If you know your customer base, your Viral Marketing will be more successful. You should track and analyze what induces them to want to pass along your message. Clever Viral Marketing plans take advantage of common human motivation. Design a marketing strategy that builds on common motivations and behaviors for its transmission and you have a winner. If you can identify who your customer is, this Viral Marketing can be quite inexpensive and highly effective. Questionnaires and online surveys and can also be very helpful in getting inside of your customer’s head. The questionnaires and survey can and should be your most valuable resource when it comes to understanding what your customers want. Giving meticulous consideration to your customer’s needs and the promise to meet those needs is what will ultimately make your business a success.
Use existing communication and social networks
Most people are social. Each person has a network of 8 to 12 people in their close network of friends, family, and associates. A person’s broader network may consist of hundreds or thousands of people. Learn to place your message into existing communications between people, and you will rapidly multiply the Viral Marketing dispersion.
Connect with comments
Another important concept is to connect with your audience. Remember, you got their attention, they are excited, and now they want to talk. Comments are one of the most effective ways to do this.
Keep in mind that the best Viral Marketing campaign is one that creates a strong emotion. This means some people will really like it – while others will get very angry. You have to accept both in your comments, and you have to welcome both opinions. But, at the same time, you must prevent individuals from waging war against each other. And, most importantly, connecting with people through comments means responding. Do not add comments if you do not want to participate yourself.
Take advantage of the resources of others
The most creative Viral Marketing plans use other people’s resources to get the word out. Affiliate programs, for example, place text or graphic links on other websites. Authors who give away free articles seek to position their articles on other web pages. A news release can be picked up by hundreds of periodicals and form the basis of articles seen by hundreds of thousands of readers. Now, someone else’s newsprint or webpage is relaying your marketing message. Someone else’s resources are depleted rather than your own.

Summary

Viral Marketing can do well for your business. It can help generate more traffic and more income. People are lured to your site so you have to be creative in your Viral Marketing campaign. An important thing that is of concern, though, is that although Viral Marketing is an extremely effective tool and it is something to include in your list of online marketing strategies, the basic marketing rules still apply. Understand your products and services. Understand which demographics you are targeting. Have a clear understanding of your customers’ needs and on which products and services they will most likely spend their money as well as what will make them continue to return to you as customers. And, most importantly, figure out how what you have to offer them will make them bring their friends with them to you when they do return.

To learn more about how Viral Marketing is essential to the success of your business, please visit us at CompuKol Communications.

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