Important Elements of a Viral Marketing Campaign - Spreading the Buzz
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The whole point of a viral marketing campaign is to get visitors to spread the content elsewhere. So you should make it easy for them to pass it along, right? For some reason, a lot of campaigns will stumble at this point. Perhaps marketers forget just how many different ways users can spread information now; “word-of-mouth” is a lot more like word-of-keyboard.
Baekdal makes several recommendations in this area. Of course, you should let users send your content to their friends; include a link on your site that makes it easy for them to email either a link or the content itself (you can even give them a choice). You should also let users download your content in a usable format – this means MPG for videos, JPG for pictures, and so forth. If you want to appeal to bloggers, let them easily embed the content on their own sites (and for that reason, you should watch your bandwidth). What could be better for spreading your message than someone writing about your content and showing it to their visitors?
Make sure your content is social-media-friendly. You can add widgets to let visitors add your content to social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us, searchles, and others. And of course, don't forget the social networks: Digg, YouTube, etc. Digg might be tricky, depending on your content, but tons of viral campaigns have found their way, one way or another, to YouTube.
I've referred several times to user-generated content, though not in those terms. Phillips says that it solicited – and received – a lot of letters from men about their body grooming experiences. Other companies have run contests for commercials from ordinary people about their product. The point is, when you get visitors excited about what you have to offer in this way (remember that you're trying to produce a strong emotion), they want to talk about it. Let them, by enabling them to comment.
This means you'll have to do a little moderation, though perhaps not the kind you think. You should NOT delete comments from people who say they don't like your campaign. You should, however, prevent vocal visitors from attacking each other. As Baekdal emphasizes, “It is not a sin to delete comments from people who attack another person, if the comment is off-topic. But, it is a sin to delete comments from people who just have a negative opinion.” Oh, and one other thing: be prepared to make comments in reply. Don't get defensive; simply appreciate the give-and-take. It could give you some marvelous ideas, and frankly you can't BUY this kind of marketing research.
Finally, remember that viruses need to be free to spread. So don't restrict them. This means that you must not require people to register to use this content. They should not have to become members or download special software. They should not have to enter some kind of code to “unlock” the content or otherwise do something tricky in order to get the right link. According to Baekdal, “Viral marketing is never about exclusivity. It is about getting it out there for everyone to see.” Here's hoping you get your campaign seen!
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