The term viral marketing, though sometimes negatively viewed as cousin to the evil computer virus, has created its own niche on the online marketing world. At its core, viral marketing simply means creating a marketing idea that viewers will pass along to their friends and contacts, creating far-reaching potential for exposure. By taking advantage of social networks and media, businesses can spread their message using word of mouth with the goal of reaching far more viewers than possible otherwise.
Creating a Viral Message
Successful viral marketing depends on two key principles. The first is crafting a message that people will want to share. Your message needs to resonate with viewers and give people a reason to pass it along. Most marketing campaigns that have gone viral included one or more of the following elements:
Think about the chain emails that come to your inbox, probably on a daily basis. If you’re the type to pass things along, there’s probably a certain category of messages that capture your attention and entice you to send them to friends. Political messages, comic strips, funny videos, 101 uses for vinegar—all of these appeal to a niche group that will be most likely to share them with others. In order to create a successful viral marketing campaign, you’ll need to determine what will be the most likely to appeal to your target audience and capitalize on that appeal to help disperse your message.
Getting the Message Out
The second principle for a successful viral marketing campaign is creating exposure in the right circles. If you want your message to catch on, you’ve got to make sure the right people see it. Social media outlets like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, websites like Digg and StumbleUpon, and well-known bloggers all provide outlets for your message to be seen. Make use of communities that already exist such as your email contact list or your Facebook group to propagate your marketing idea and you’ll be well on your way to exponential growth. If your content resonates with your target audience, you’ve won half the battle. The other half will be won for you as readers hit the forward button on their email messages, post links on blogs and Facebook pages, and send out Tweets.
Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.Social media has become the new bandwagon for businesses hoping to generate new sales leads. If you don’t have a Facebook page and a Twitter account, you may as well not exist in the minds of a large portion of your intended audience. For many, it’s just not worth the trouble of having to visit individual sites to check out sales promotions and blog posts. Instead, they want to hop on Facebook and see all the latest news collected neatly for them in their inboxes. But social media isn’t just convenient for consumers. It’s also a powerful tool for businesses to incorporate into their overall marketing strategies.
The Positives
Social media provides potential access to an audience of millions at the touch of a button. Want to build your contact list so more people see sales ads and promotional items? Host an ipod giveaway on Facebook and watch your list of contacts balloon. Social media also gives companies an opportunity to find out what customers really think about their products and services. By listening in on forum conversations and post comments, they can get an inside look at how people view the company and can then take steps to address those concerns.
The Negatives
The social media sphere isn’t all roses for businesses, however. The very thing that makes social media appealing to consumers—the ability to hear real life opinions and experiences with a particular company—can quickly destroy a company’s reputation if a negative experience becomes public. The potential for companies to lose control over marketing messages means that they need a strategy for addressing problems and concerns immediately in order to allay fears.
Putting it together
Remember the Domino’s pizza nightmare? It’s an excellent demonstration of how quickly word can spread in the social media environment. With nearly a million views of a disgruntled employee’s damaging video on the first day it was posted, Domino’s immediately had a marketing crisis to deal with. But the good news is that companies can use that same power to build brand loyalty and address concerns as they arise. Companies like Dell Computers have mastered the art of meeting people where they are and tactfully addressing concerns in a way that garners customer loyalty without engendering feelings of distrust or frustration. Stepping into social media conversations allows you to address specific concerns and needs at the customer’s level, especially when done in a way that doesn’t come across as a sales pitch, but rather as a genuine effort to provide benefit.
Social media will find you whether you have a strategy in place or not. People are already talking about you in blogs, on their Facebook pages, over their Twitter accounts, and in forums. By taking the initiative to define parameters of conversation, you can guide those conversations toward a positive interaction with your company and set yourself up to be viewed as a trusted entity rather than scary corporation.
Are you using a social media strategy in your business? Have you seen businesses that excel with their social media strategy? What about businesses that fail miserably? Share in the comments!
Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.In today’s business world, it can be very easy to ruin a company’s reputation. Sometimes all it takes is one scandal, but sometimes all it takes is one slanderous comment. That is why it is even more important than ever that companies focus on online reputation management.
Online reputation management is when a company assesses all of the information available online about their brand, service, product, or company. An important part of managing your online reputation is also having a plan for dealing with any negative comments that you might find about your company.
You may find that your competitors are trying to smear your company’s name or product in a variety of backhanded ways. They could do this through comments on blogs, through posting ghost blogs, or through creating websites that complain about your company. Previous customers can also be a problem. Sometimes all it takes is one bad experience for customers to decide that you are not a reputable business and they may decide to warn everyone else not to do business with you either.
You also may find problems with other companies’ bad reputations. If they have a similar name or website address or if your companies share the same initials, people might confuse your company with theirs. Online reputation management is very important in these circumstances to keep your company name clear.
How do you improve your online reputation? Ranking high on search engines and advertising on various respectable websites are two good ways. You need to make sure that people see plenty of positive information about your company when they search for it and not just negative information. Regularly updating content on your company website can be a great way to do this. It is also important to have articles and press releases written about your company. Try to gather up as much free publicity for your company as you can. Set up product or service reviews with various high ranking blogs. Make a Facebook or Twitter page for your company and offer people an incentive like a discount to like your page. Uploading promotional videos to YouTube and Google videos is also a good idea.
But how do you monitor your online reputation to make sure that it is not being damaged? Google Alerts will notify you with new Google results using your company or product name and positive or negative keyword phrases that you choose to have them search for. You can search Twitter to see if your company has been mentioned in tweets. Trackur and Brandseye are both services that monitor all the aspects of social media and keeps you informed. Knowing what others are saying about you on the internet gives you the opportunity to smooth over the bad and highlight the good.
Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.
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