subject: Viral Marketing Tools And Strategies [print this page] Viral marketing tool describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential growth in the message's exposure and influence.
Like viruses, such strategies take advantage to explode the message to thousands, to millions. In other words, if you give away free reports like e-books, other items to your subscribers, your free give-aways should be viral in nature like free e-mail services, free information.
The first viral traffic method which can bring you tons of targeted subscribers to your web site of blog is through the use of articles. Article marketing has been around for quite some time, but still proves to be one of the top ways for bringing traffic. If you can make your articles compelling enough, there will be many other people that may wish to publish your articles on their web site or blogs.
Be sure to take advantage of the author box to drive traffic to the page or pages in which you are trying to gain traffic. You must also take full advantage whenever possible and use anchor text in your resource box so you can increase your search engine rankings
Social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn is another strategy as they can be effective viral marketing tools, which by their nature, enable businesses to build connections and relationships.
Each of these networks has seen a dramatic and well-documented increase in users in recent years, as they have enabled businesses to treat their customer engagement as a valued activity.
As businesses discover the best way to engage with their social network audiences, most have mimicked the best practices for email newsletters: let the audience choose to hear from you, share content that matches their interest. Don't focus solely on your own viral marketing tool or materials; be sure to maintain a steady flow of communication with your customers as well. As a result, moving followers, friends, fans and other connections to your email subscriber list is a very natural transition.
Archive your newsletters to extend content to social networks. Facebook, Twitter and Linked In all provide easy ways to send updates to people who want to hear from small businesses. A best practice here is to keep these messages very short, even for those services that don't impose a character limit. Make sure you archive your newsletters online and then provide a one-sentence overview of the content and a link back to the full article.
Archiving also has the benefit of extending the life of your content, so if a particular article becomes relevant to future conversations, you can link back to the article whenever it is appropriate. The more compelling the content, the more likely it is that your social media connections will share the information with their networks and distribute your message even further.
If you include a "Join my mailing list" link in your newsletter, every click-through to the archived newsletter is a potential new subscriber. Using a URL shortening service like http://bit.ly also allows you to track vital reader information including when people clicked-through and which readers shared your link with their social networks. Stating in your newsletter that you appreciate those who share your content is a great way to encourage that behavior.
The viral marketing tool and strategies are readily gaining momentum and is the trend nowadays, so you had better gear yourself up for it. You don't want to be left behind!
