Viral Marketing Techniques Every Web Site Should Be Using

by Titus Hoskins

Viral Marketing Techniques Every Web Site Should Be Using

Viral marketing can work wonders for any business, web site or product. It can be a great source of sales leads, one-way links and targeted traffic. Yet, many marketers are not taking full advantage of this 'viral factor' in their marketing efforts.

How about you? Are you using any viral marketing methods with your web site? Or does the word 'viral' make you cringe?

Many people believe 'viral marketing' is a myth, one of those Internet follies that only happens on rare occasions when some fantastic product or site comes along.

In reality, viral marketing techniques can be used by any web site - big or small. They can be used by any marketer who takes the time to put some simple steps into place. Viral marketing 'done right' can have many benefits. It will:

- increase your link popularity (often one way links)
- increase targeted traffic to your site
- build your brand recognition
- create targeted leads for your products
- automate your marketing efforts

Here are some simple viral marketing techniques you can try with your web site, product or business:

1. Word of Mouth - We have all seen this phenomenon displayed with many products . People spread the word about some great movie or gadget and suddenly everyone knows about it. Human nature dictates we tell our friends about some great product we have bought or found. Nature of the beast, it's just the way we are - so why not take full advantage of it?

If you have a web site - put up a simple 'tell a friend' form so your visitors can easily tell others about your great site. Easy and very simple to do, but many webmasters don't do it. Similarly, if you have a newsletter, service, product or with any aspect of your site - just include a few sentences at the end of your copy - asking very politely, "if you found this service, product or web site helpful - why not tell your friends, family and colleagues about it."

2. Branding - Make sure you have a logo on your site or product. Branding your site is very important if you want your site or product to be noticed and talked about. For that matter, a catchy brand name can be a 'viral technique' in itself - so try and come up with one that springs from the lips with a distinctive ring to it!

People recognize brands, it gives them a clear image of your site or product. Include your brand or logo on every page of your site and on every product, service, material coming from your site or business.

3. eBooks - Savvy marketers jumped on this new invention very quickly, they knew the 'viral' power of these little ebooks. Ebooks are electronic files that can be downloaded from any web site and distributed easily around the web. You can also have other webmasters or marketers, 're-brand' these ebooks with their own links. High quality ebooks get passed along very quickly and are great viral tools.

Anyone can write a simple ebook on the topic of their site. If you can't write, just get permission to use a collection of articles from the numerous 'article directories' on the web such as www.ezinearticles.com or www.goarticles.com . Ebook compiling software (in both .exe or pdf format) is relatively cheap or can be found for free on the net. Just Google to find it!

4. Viral Software - Some simple software products or applications can be very viral, often passed around or downloaded from the web by thousands each day. These have to be useful or handy products that the users will desire - ecalendars, organizers, personal planners, link checking software, and so on. Many are desktop products that sit on the computer user's desktop - prime location in the marketing arena.

And the best examples of this kind of viral software have the company logo, sales message and contact email - with LIVE LINKS to all of the above - conveniently displayed within the product. These simple software programs can be great viral promotional devices that spread like wildfire across the web. (get an example of this below in the author's resource box)

5. RSS - Newest player in the viral game! RSS which stands for 'Really Simple Syndication' and just by the nature of what it does; RSS is an awesome viral tool. Originally used by news organizations to syndicate their news stories, it is usually associated with Blogs because blogs use an RSS feed to distribute their content. Good quality RSS feeds are picked up and displayed by different web sites all across the web.

Since Microsoft has announced the next version of Windows will have RSS integrated into its operating system, new RSS applications will take viral marketing to heights that have not been witnessed before. Alert marketers are already gearing up for this viral explosion.

You should also be gearing up for RSS if you haven't already. Using a simple site like blogger.com (owned by Google) will give you a basic blog and RSS feed to spread your message or product to all interested parties.

These are just some viral techniques that will help increase your web presence. They will also boost your traffic and increase your links. Used properly, these viral techniques will also spread your website, product or service around the globe.

What more can you ask for?

About the Author
Get a Free DATEwise eCalendar & Personal Planner for your Desktop. It's a perfect example of 'viral marketing' in action! Click here for Free Desktop Calendar Copyright © 2005 Titus Hoskins of Free Marketing Tools
This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.


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How I Get Hundreds Of Daily Website Visitors For Free

by Louis Allport

Know about "Viral eBooks"?

It's not a new concept I'll admit, but it works like absolute gangbusters. In fact, over the past three years it has personally been responsible for bringing me hundreds of thousands of visitors to just one of my websites. AND - 100% for free.

Getting traffic with Viral eBooks is a "free traffic tactic", which means you're not paying for advertising. But, because you're not paying for this exposure, you need to instead create content that people WANT to pass on.

This takes effort, but if you do it right, it can pay you back hugely. Let's go through it:

Okay - for starters you can create Viral eBooks in two formats:

EXE (executable) format - which means it only works on PC's. This type of eBook looks like a website packaged together.

These types of eBooks look great, and all someone has to do to view it is download and double-click it. But, as mentioned it does only work on PC's, and generally the software to create these types of eBooks isn't free, although it is very affordable. (I personally use the software from eBookCompiler.com which as I write this retails for around $30.)

Alternatively - you can create and distribute Viral eBooks in the hugely popular PDF format. The advantage of PDF is that everyone can read them successfully whether they're viewing your eBook on PC, Mac or "other".

To read PDF successfully, the person who downloaded the eBook needs to have the free Adobe Reader installed on their computer. Most people do, and if they don’t it's a quick download from Adobe.com, so this isn't an issue.

Although PDF’s can be more widely read that EXE style eBooks, they’re not quite as flexible. With EXE's for example you can actually embed video and audio into the eBook. This isn't possible with PDF. With PDF you would need to instead include a link to where the reader can view or download the audio/video online.

So with this in mind, you need to decide what's most important to you and make your choice accordingly for eBook format. I personally don't recommended you create your eBook in both formats, since that just complicates the distribution process in my experience. Stick with one or the other.

For creating Viral PDF's - there's a wide array of software that allows you to create PDF's. Some of this software is free, some mind-bogglingly expensive. To view many available options, simply search Download.com or Tucows.com.

For creating Viral PDF's, I personally use software that I had specially created. And the advantage of my software is that it allows you to easily create fully *brandable* PDF's. This means that people can customize your PDF with their own affiliate or website details.

The benefit of this feature is that it makes it much more likely the PDF will spread far and wide for you as it gives the reader a strong incentive to pass the PDF on as they can now directly profit from it's distribution.

You can get this PDF branding software for free at BrandPDF.com

So those are your two options for eBook formats.

Now - how do you make it truly viral?

Well, first of all, decide what kind of visitors you want to your website, and create an eBook on a subject that would interest those people.

Your eBook has to be truly useful, interesting, and credible. Don't create a poor quality eBook since no one will read it, which means of course that no one will visit your site.

You can even include multi-media links within your eBook to related audio and video if you like, making your product even more interesting and unique. These download links lead back to your site of course, which naturally gets you more visitors.

If you're not familiar with a subject matter that would allow you to reach your target audience, you could perhaps have an eBook ghostwritten. There's plenty of Ghostwriters who would bid on a project you list for free at eLance.com.

(Ghostwriters are professional writers who create unique content for you on a subject of your choice, and give you all the rights to it, so you can use it as you choose. Many ghostwriters offer their services very affordably.)

Alternatively - an information-rich interview with an expert in the field could be a good solution. The person you interview gets free advertising that way too of course, so they may well be happy to spend the time.

Such an interview can be done either by email or by phone. The audio of a phone interview would be edited (to remove any mistakes) and then transcribed. Both the audio and transcript can then be offered in the eBook.

In my personal experience, longer interviews (more than just a few simple questions) don't work well by email since it can take the person being interviewed quite a lot of typing, and I find the momentum of the process quickly fades this way with every question asked, which can lead to significant delays.

For this reason, and to keep things quick and easy for the person being interviewed, I have generally gone with phone interviews in the past - one hour of interview generally creates from around 7,000 to 10,000 words of content.

Then after finalizing the recording and tidying the transcript, pass the product by the interview-ee before publication to confirm their approval.

And let me stress again - your eBook must be high quality and credible. The higher the quality the further it will spread.

If it's free to give away, maybe aim for an eBook that could sell for $20 comfortably - IF - it was being sold.

Use this as a rough guide to the kind of value you want to aim for with your eBook. The more value you offer in a subject your target market is interested in, the more people will pay attention to it. It's as simple as that.

So finally - how do you make the eBook as viral as possible?

One important point already mentioned more than once is to make the eBook very high quality.

The next important point also touched on is that it is very good to give people strong incentives to pass the eBook on, rather than simply hoping they do. To do this, give them benefits for passing it on. Particularly - by making it brandable so that the person passing it on can add their affiliate links, or even their "home page" address to it. For example:

"This eBook is brought to you by JoeBloggs.com"

If it's a free to sell eBook (which means: if you have a copy of the eBook, you have the automatic right to sell it yourself. In a sense these are resale rights that automatically roll from one eBook owner to the next) - have a ready-made and professional website and sales page linked to from within the eBook, so that it's easy for people to start selling it.

And if the offer, sales copy, website and product are all high quality, the eBook should sell well for everyone who resells it, which means it quickly spreads far and wide for you.

If you give everyone who gets a copy of the eBook a way to profit it will just keep on spreading for years to come. This has been my experience. Search for my name in Google to see this first hand.

And pay attention to the rights you give the eBook - loose rights for an eBook will help it spread far and wide quickly. Specify the rights within the first page or two of the eBook so there's no confusion. And don't just say "Master Rights". Explain the rights in an easy to understand way.

And let me also say that the more eBooks you create, the larger the "Viral Net" you'll have out there working for you to bring you visitors every single day.

I've personally been creating viral eBooks for around three years as I write this, and have over thirty eBooks out there on thousands upon thousands of web sites. AND - on tens of thousands (even hundreds of thousands) of personal computers around the world. And all these eBooks are working automatically every day to bring traffic back to my site.

Starting your own Viral eBook library can do the same for you.

About the Author
Louis Allport is an online product developer and marketer. To get a free download of his powerful "Viral PDF Generator" software, visit the following address:
Viral PDF Generator


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