Viral Marketing

Introduction

For most of us, successful business networking used to mean recommending one associate to another and collecting a recommendation in return, swapping business cards at conferences, or connecting with industry colleagues over a good lunch. But that’s just not the case anymore. These days, the best business networking tools at your disposal involve effective use of the Net.

Search engines assign relevance and importance to networking sites and human edited directories such as; MySpace, Xanga, Wikipedia, or Dmoz. By effectively leveraging the traffic of social networking sites, industry forums and online discussions, entrepreneurs can build brand awareness in virtual communities of prospects and associates.

Putting Viral Marketing to Work

Doing business on the Net means learning to take advantage of the well-known habits and typical behaviors of hundreds, or thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of web surfers.

There are a lot ways to kick-start a viral marketing campaign, which is a campaign that takes advantage of pre-existing social networks to generate exponential increases in brand awareness. Most will drive targeted traffic straight to your site, but one of the more effective viral strategies relies on free e-books. A viral marketing e-book is the kind of authoritative “product” that can be widely distributed with ease. And, each time a consumer downloads your free e-book, you’ll gain a long-term conversion prospect and the opportunity to turn a profit on your products or services.

Having a viral marketing campaign based on e-books, newsletters, or the like, will not only generate business, it will help you retain hesitant customers and bring consumers back to your site.

Power of Communication

There are plenty of websites featuring e-books or newsletters that make the mistake of charging for this material. But the truth is, charging for an e-book isn’t the best way to encourage its distribution. Consumers love signing up for freebies – even when they’re packed with information about your products and services. By offering a free e-book, you’ll ensure that your campaign has a wide reach.

Here’s where the power of viral communication lies—once a consumer is ready to give you their email address, it means that they’re interested in doing business with you, and that they won’t be wary of a conversion oriented follow-up.

It’s also worth noting that if you allow your e-books to be redistributed or rebranded, you’ll practically guarantee additional targeted traffic, and in turn, a greater return on your investment.

Rely on Quality Content in Your Viral Marketing Campaign

It may seem like an overly simple thing to say, but the quality of your free e-books or newsletters will be vitally important. Consumers won't be impressed or converted by spelling or grammar errors. As a matter of fact, mistakes like those will tend to cause the readers to, well, stop reading altogether, or even worse, distrust the products or services your e-book’s focused on. So, remember, if your e-book isn't professional, your targeted demographic won't take you seriously.