Unique ideas for spreading Viral Marketing

[spennyc]

Anyone have any really unique ideas for viral marketing? Also - anyone know of fast ways to spread a viral flash piece? I created one (optical illusion thing in my sig) but wondering how to spread it to people fast.

[Troy1960]

Bumper stickers on the back of your car.

[GeorgeB.]

Sad fact is most people with good, real methods for gaining viral traffic won't share. And soem rightfully so because the moment they do the places where they advertise their sites get spammed!

[BlogMosh]

Good viral methods are like their biological namesakes. Ebola, when it rears its ugly head, burns hot and fast - but burns itself out quickly. Seemingly not to re-appear until the most recent outbreak has been forgotten. Perhaps looking backwards to find things that worked in the beginning days of the Web would be time well spent?

[clink]

I guess press releases could work. Perhaps some local targeted advertising as well and see how it can branch out from your area via word of mouth

[etechsupport]

You can add games, screensavers, greeting cards or graphic demos that people can e-mail to their friends.

[DanNicol]

Here is how I have thought about this in the past:

Sit down with a piece of paper and just start writing down promotion ideas. I dont think about anything else, I dont edit anything, I dont care about expanding any ideas. The goal for me is simple dump every bit of info from my brain.

I usually then take a break because I am tired.

Obviously you at that point have a start, now you need to refine.

Another tip - look at you site in the eyes of the users and ask yourself honestly if you would tell somebody you knew about the site.

-Anyway that is my 2 cents

-Dan

[guk6kk]

That is what I exactly do. As DanNicol said, you need to stud your site and sketch down your thoughts.

[clink]

Well then I guess what in a site makes it worthy to tell friends. I mean its not too tricky to attain the returning visits it seems but the effort of telling a friend just seems pointless to me, no matter how cool a site is. The only types of websites that seem to get spread virally are just one off wacky ideas and no so much useful websites.

[M. Johansson]

Stuff becomes viral if

1. It's something really, really worthy of telling a friend
2. It's really easy to tell a friend about it.

[DanNicol]

clink -

I'm really not much for buzz terms like "viral marketing" or "buzz" or whatever, I think they are all basic word of mouth marketing.

However viral means your site has to be easily transfered to others - either by word of mouth, tell a friend scripts, postings and links from respected sites etc.

To see this in action read in the next few days about the gift packages the celebs get at the Oscars tonight. The companies that participate in this are hoping that the celebs will say they love blah.blah product. Then the follower people go buy that product.

Drudgereport.com grew this way also, promoted early on by Rush.

So basically figure out who would be the "celebrity or celebrities" in your space. I would create a list and start networking to find the right path to those people. This will take a while but you will gain early supporters along the way as well.



-Take Care

Dan

[kieron]

Freebies and TAF scripts

[rex_b]

I did a blog on this not too long ago with some really interesting numbers, check it.

[sitcomjunkie]

There are many way to go viral -- social bookmarking in digg, delicious, stumbleupon and reddit -- putting your link in your status message in your messenger, putting your link in the bulletin of your social network (like myspace)

If you'd like to know more about viral marketing -- check out this viral marketing blog -- http://wonderabby.wordpress.com

[JNKlein]

Viral marketing is making something so good, and so valuable, that people spread it without you. By definition, you can't "spread" viral marketing yourself.

What you do is make the awesome thing and tell everyone in your network. If it's worth spreading, they'll do so for you... and then those friends will tell their friends, and so forth.

There are no shortcuts for real success.

Any suggestions you hear, such as using social media, just refer to you telling your network through a different medium. If you don't have a network there already, you will not find any use from these networks (except maybe Stumblupon... maybe).

Build the network before you need it.

[WritingAndRaving]

The work goes into the content creation and then the promotional 'kick-off'. If its truly viral it won't need your help to spread itself.

[realmadrid2727]

Easy.

Create a super-popular web site which can serve as a vector for viral promotion, such as, for instance, Digg. Then use that site to launch the site you want to virally-market.

Of course, creating that first site to do the work for the second is hard. But hey, technically I answered your question!

[3ct7]

Freebies are good for this. Also funny pictures. Every time you see some viral marketing that is successful make a note of it and describe why it works. In a few months you will have an outline of all the possibilities.

[mg1313]

Originally Posted by JNKlein

Viral marketing is making something so good, and so valuable, that people spread it without you. By definition, you can't "spread" viral marketing yourself.

Then I hope my coming widget will go viral ...because my site it's useful, I guess.