Examples of Viral Marketing

To have success in viral marketing, you must understand two things. First, you can’t make things go viral. Either Internet users love the content and share it with their friends or not. You can’t force it; viral marketing just happens. Second, to have success in making something go viral you need to have an extraordinarily good idea that fulfills a strong need or hits an emotion.

Viral content can be any number of things. Including these …

• Controversial news or comment made on a blog, Twitter feed, or in the mainstream press that is so interesting to readers they share links and republish information elsewhere on the web.
• Research data. Did you compile data that could help other people or businesses? Share it in a white paper!
• An application, gadget, or other online tool that folks just have to have on their own website or social media page. Check out Google’s long list of fun gadgets to see what I mean.
• Videos often go viral thanks to YouTube and similar video sites. Anymore, brands create online video instead of commercials, etc., because they cost less and can create a “cult-like” following online. Here’s a great example of a viral video featuring the E*Trade babies. Some of the videos in this series have over 4 million views — that’s viral.

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