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Viral advertising is recognised as just about the best method of free advertising available. It is mostly associated with internet technologies and social websites, but the roots of viral advertising lies in the simplest form ever known...word of mouth...which is still extremely powerful today. Viral marketing IS extremely powerful but it can take a little time to set up a viral campaign that you can use to build a large increase in web traffic. However, once you have managed to start the ball rolling it can literally spread like a virus, hence the name, viral advertising. Most items that we associate with "going viral" tend to be videos, jokes, emails of chain letters and all sorts of nonsense. But these tend to be short lived, fast burn out items like videos of drunken celebrities or stupid politicians, etc. When using viral advertising for generating web traffic you tend to not get that massive initial surge of traffic but instead get a steadily increasing stream of traffic as people become aware of you or your brand or product. So if that is the case why is viral advertising SO powerful and SO necessary? Because that steady stream can turn into a river over a little time and then a flood as the viral message gets out. It’s called viral advertising because like a virus it starts off with a few people and then as they pass it on to one or two others it then begins to really grow. Viral advertising is being used to build branding, create product awareness and create online identities in order to build your intended audience with a confidence in you and your product. That confidence can then be easily transferred to another person virally by some form of referral, either word of mouth or email or messaging or one of the many other forms of social networking there are out there. So how do you start that virus spreading? 1. Blogging is one of the best means of virally advertising. Good quality content and regular updates will bring return visits to your blog and will likely have your URL passed by word of mouth or by email quite quickly if that content is of high quality and is regularly updated. This also provides you with a platform to provide other means for your readers to virally spread your message or products. Blogs can rank well in search engines if the content is relevant and regularly updated. 2. Viral advertising can be done by emailing a list of people that you think would be interested in a website...quick note here: DO NOT SPAM! I know that seems obvious these days but it still happens, just check your own inbox. So if you have a group of friends or you are in a Google or Yahoo Group or similar, and you have a website or something that you just created that you think will interest those people, then you can email them with your site link and in turn they may refer this to others they know that are not in your email list or in your Google or Yahoo Group...or other such interest group. Again this is a means of starting a viral campaign by having good site content referred to others beyond your immediate contact. 3. Social networks are huge at the moment and so things like Twitter and Facebook can provide a means of virally spreading your product, content or message. These also have a good way of targeting those that might be interested in what you have to say or sell. But don’t think that just by communicating to one or two handfuls of people will bring an avalanche of potential traffic, remember my first point, ALWAYS provide quality content, that way the referrals are more likely and so your viral campaign will begin to spread. 4. Forums are a good means of finding people that are likely to be interested in what you want to advertise. There are tens of thousands of forums and on tens of thousands of subjects, so finding a forum that is in your niche shouldn’t be a problem. If there are multiple forums that suite what you are advertising then why not join several or all of them? Forums can be a little slow to use because you will need to build a trust with the other forum users, and that trust is easily obtained by following the forum rules and by providing good quality responses to threads, or by starting good threads. It really is not a good idea to dive straight in to a forum and start a thread saying, "Come and look and this product I’m trying to sell". You can guarantee you will be ostracised by the forum, probably be banned from the site by the moderators and possibly even worse than that, you might waste a really good user name :) Seriously though, if you make it obvious that you are only there to sell a product or get traffic then you will find that a virus will start but it will be one that will only grow against you and not in favour of you, so be sensible when using forums as a means of promotion. The simplest form of promotion, even from your first posting, is to add a link in your signature, even if you are posting a response to a thread that hasn’t too much to do with what you are ultimately promoting. With time you will gain trust and you will find that people will start to click on your signature link to find out more about what you are about, especially if they think you have a lot of good things to add to the forum on a regular basis. Like I said, forums can be slow, but when they start to generate traffic it tends to be very sticky traffic that will return time and again. 5. Write articles on the subject of whatever niche you are in. Do they still do that? Well you are reading an article right now aren’t you? :) Again, content is king. It must be informative and provide the reader with something they are looking for. You can’t please all the people all the time with articles because you cannot guarantee the level of knowledge each reader has. This article might only provide two new ideas to someone, but as long as they believe they have gained a value and found something they can apply from reading this article then I have done the job of providing that quality of information that I keep going on about. 6. A time tested means of viral advertising is with eBooks. By providing a good quality eBook that is value for money...not some shabby 5 page report that you offload for ten dollars in order to make a quick and easy sale. The idea is that you provide good quality content that you either give away or sell for a reasonable price, that your customers believe provided then with good quality information and would be happy to pass on your URL or brand or even the eBook to other people they believe would be interested in seeing your quality product, Why? Because no one ever refers people to bad products. These are just 6 methods but there are many other means of advertising virally and new ways appear all the time.
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