Viral Marketing 101 - What Is Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is a phenomenon. It works and works well. Why? Because it puts the power in the hands of the people. It doesn't rely on advertising executives, million dollar campaigns or celebrity endorsements. It is real, down-to-earth, grassroots marketing that, when it comes down to it, might be advertising in its purest form.

Viral marketing is one of the most effective ways of driving traffic to your website with little effort on your part. With viral marketing, you can send your marketing message to selected recipients who then pass on that message to others. Viral marketing is easy and affordable, so anyone can do it. Viral marketing, while driven by strategy and well-planned messaging, is only successful when its audience is captivated. A marketing campaign will only go “viral” if people like it and ultimately, share it with others. Therefore, they have the power. Not the marketer.

Online business owners and Internet marketers alike understand the important role viral marketing plays in the success of their businesses today via a solid social media marketing strategy. Social media networks have become just as much about business as they are about pleasure.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, (ultimate guide to using Pinterest for marketing) and other key players are essential elements in any social media marketing strategy now joining us in the boardroom, in sales meetings and are the hottest marketing venues for bloggers. Blogs are replacing news media in many ways, and we must adapt our marketing approach to become players in the new Internet marketing schema. Image Credit: http://www.rylanclayne.com/

Google +1 is essential now for rankings and for using social media fr viral marketing, learn more with 5 Tips For Using Google +1 For Business.  Blog Engage is a fantastic place to submit your content and network with bloggers that understand the importance of viral marketing and spreading the word.

How To Go Viral Using A Social Media Strategy

Say, for example, you are an Internet marketer with a blog that you want to promote using a social media marketing strategy. You create and sell valuable sales tools, including E-books, reports, videos and webinars and offer valuable content to readers on a specific niche. Not only should you have a list to which you apply your email marketing campaign, but in addition, you can share your offerings on social media marketing channels like, Facebook, Linkedin, tweeting about them on Twitter, YouTube and others, the possibilities are endless.

With a little bit of creativity and a true understanding of your target market, viral marketing has the ability to skyrocket your business to new heights when using a solid and consistent social media marketing strategy. Not only should you consider the favor of your current customer base, but approach your viral marketing campaign in such a way that encourages – and makes them want to – share your business with others. You could offer free products for every ten people your customers share your link with. The more you incentivize, the more likely people are to share with others. 

Think about it, if you were your own customer, what would entice you to share your products? What grabs your attention? Start there and see what works in social media marketing and viral marketing messages. The other great thing about viral marketing is, if one approach isn’t working, you lose nothing by switching gears. Just be careful to settle in to a consistent message, no matter what your approach might be.

Always remember that value is the key to success in viral marketing an social media marketing, people always want to spread something useful around and tell others because they want to share it and show their appreciation as well.

Viral Marketing Via A Social Media Marketing

If you have high quality products, services and content your marketing message will be passed on to many people via viral marketing. Viral is usually best when it is done via word of mouth, like any brick and mortar business. And online it is social media that provides a venue for people to share your content and refer new visitors and customers to your websites and blogs.

A single piece of content can get unlimited retweets from followers, which is really an incredible and free way to spread your content and increase the opportunities for more links and more exposure, and therefore more popularity and in turn higher rankings and more money, this is how viral marketing works via a solid social media marketing strategy.

Viral Content Ideas And Methods To Promote via Social Media Marketing

The key to success with viral marketing is to offer something of value, no matter what niche you are in order to get others to spread it around. The tips below will help you to engage in your viral marketing campaign and use  a social media strategy to set your online business on fire. Image Credit: http://www.mmtc-direct.com

• Always have a variety of social media buttons on your blog, use WP Socializer as previously stated to make this easy. Great plugin with a lot of versatility for easily adding social buttons in many different places on your blog.

• Titles matter - make sure the title of your content is engaging and sparks interest for people to want to go and take a look.

• Use a plugin like Twitter Tools that auto posts your new content to Twitter, this makes it easy, set it and forget it system. Also, check out 5 copywriting strategies to accelerate Twitter marketing.

• If you have a static website, make sure to attach a blog, this is essential for spreading content and making it go viral.

• Learn to build and create meaningful connections on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and not just numbers, quality matters, here.

• You can carry out your viral marketing campaign by creating e-books, reports or articles and distribute them to targeted recipients, giving them away for free. Any Internet marketer can do this; since it simply involves creating the product, pass it on and let other people pass it on further for you.

• Post great images with your content and use Pinterest to promote it.

• Offer high quality products and content that spread your marketing message. Write well-researched reports and e-books on your niche and add your URL on these reports. Many people like getting free reports and e-books. These e-books will provide very powerful information on your topic, and people who read them will visit your website. Further distribution of your reports and e-book will result in more traffic to your website as well as increased awareness of your business or brand.

• Get active on social sites that matter, Facebook, Twitter, Google +, LinkedIn, Blog Engage and other relevant social sites in your niche. If your niche is related to online business, blogging and Internet marketing see this list of 23 social sites to promote Internet Marketing, blogging type content. Be social on social networks, do not just be self serving. Share others information and they in turn, will share yours. Viral marketing is a give and take and the more you give, the more you will get.

• Do not just self promote, reach out to other bloggers and retweet and like on Facebook their content as well.

• Link back to other sites and get your content noticed by influential bloggers.

• You can also offer a free service or product on your web site that spreads your message to an increasing number of people who hear about it. Send out news releases concerning the free service or product available on your site. This in turn will generate huge volumes of traffic to your website.

• Setting up an affiliate program that encourages links to your products can also be helpful. If you can afford it, provide attractive financial incentive for other sites to pass on your marketing message. You can also install a ‘Recommend it” referral system on your website so that other Internet marketers will pass on your website address to their lists. By having your own affiliates promoting your website, you drive a lot of traffic to your website.

• Write good quality articles and encourage other webmasters to post them for free as content on their sites. If you're an expert in a niche, write an article on that niche and give it away for free to complementary sites to post on their site as free content, so long as the article contains links to your site. Write high quality articles and distribute them online for free with reprinting rights. 

• Guest posting is a great way to go viral, and some very high traffic sites, like Mashable, accept guest posts, imagine the viral opportunities there.

Use the power of viral marketing and a solid and consistent social media strategy to spread your marketing message all over the Internet and drive high volumes of traffic to your website.

Social Media Marketing Tools

Here are resources that allow you to manage all your social media profiles and resources in one place, much easier than having to manage one by one and allows you to main stream your personal reputation management.

Hootsuite

Hellotxt

Nimble

It's never too soon to start establishing your professional image. Whether you just graduated college or are still working on earning your degree, it's important to take full advantage of all of the many marketing opportunities available to ensure optimum exposure and a successful campaign. Marketing your professional image online is a great way to get noticed by potential employers and colleagues, which can make your transition into a career much easier. However, you'll want to make sure to properly strategize your campaign for the most effective outcome.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is a fundamental component of any online marketing campaign because it helps to connect you with individuals in your industry by ranking your website higher in a search engine results list on a relevant subject. Contrary to popular belief, you can't simply spam your way up the results list by stuffing multiple keywords into the content of your website. In fact, Google recently announced the development of a new algorithm for its search engine, which is specially designed to detect websites that are abusing SEO to rank higher. This new and improved algorithm will more effectively match searchers with actually relevant—rather than superficially relevant—content.

Although stuffing keywords is not an effective SEO strategy, using keywords in general is an excellent way to drive traffic to your blog, official websites and social media websites. Google's AdWords is a great tool for determining which keywords in particular will draw the largest audience to your page. For example, the keywords "public relations specialist" generates 9,900 global monthly searches, while the plural "public relations specialists" generates only 5,400 global monthly searches according to Google AdWords. Understanding how people search keywords relevant to your industry will help you prioritize your use of the terms and increase your chances of being matched up with another professional in your industry.

Social Media Marketing

No marketing campaign is complete without taking full advantage of the various social media outlets available. As a professional, you don't have to be limited to LinkedIn and Facebook. An effective social media marketing campaign should include every social media platform available, including Twitter, Blogger, YouTube, Pinterest, Tumblr, StumbleUpon, Google+, Flickr, Digg, Delicious, and more. Including each of these platforms in your marketing campaign will ensure maximum exposure to your target audience.

Each social media account you have should connect your subscribers to your other social media accounts. For example, your Blogger profile should have a link to your accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and all other relevant accounts you have to broaden your audience and give your visitors plenty of ways to get to know you better.

Since your main goal is to market your personal brand, you'll want to make sure that both your SEO and social media marketing campaigns exemplify your professional image. Make sure your educational background is listed prominently on each of your websites and be sure to illustrate how this background contributes to your expertise. For example, "studying public relations at an online college allowed me to develop skills in communication and advertising, while fostering my proficiency with various technological software." Marketing your personal brand can be tricky at first, but synergizing these two essential components guarantees a successful outcome and a quicker establishment of your professional image.

About the author: Jon Dawson blogs on behalf of American InterContinental University and lives in Indianapolis. He covers social media, technology, health, and legal trends.

Have you been blogging for half a year or more without any measurable success? You aren't alone. Most blogs don't end up going anywhere, because most people give up when they don't see anything happening. But if you don't see anything happening, it's not because blogging doesn't work. It's either because you haven't been at it long enough, or because you've been doing something wrong. We'll assume the latter. What could the problem be? Read on for the best blogging tips if your blog is failing and struggling.

Blogging Tips for Struggling Blogs

Are You Indexed?

Take some steps to make sure that your content is getting indexed by the search engines. If it isn't, you've got a major problem on your hands. If people can't find your site in Google at all, chances are low that you'll reach the kind of audience you need.

If you are a news site or freshness is an important factor, you've also got a problem if your content isn't being indexed within seven days. If people aren't finding your site until after the buzz around a particular topic has faded, you're missing out on a huge portion of your audience.

If your content isn't getting indexed, check to see if it has problems with duplicate content. Sometimes the link structure of the site and other issues can create multiple copies of the same text, which encourages Google to avoid indexing it, ie: duplicate content. Use experts in WordPress home page and archive pages to avoid this.

You may also want to make sure that your content is "public." Just go to your WP admin dashboard and go to Settings - Privacy - and make sure Allow Search Engines To Index is checked. Blog software such as WordPress doesn't allow your content to be indexed unless you change the settings.

Are You Implementing Social Media To Promote The Blog?

Networking is a vital piece of the puzzle. If you aren't receiving any traffic from Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, you may need to alter your strategy. Make sure that your content is easy to share, and that people will want to share it. Stay active on the social networks and regularly interact with people in your niche.

Develop a set of strong relationships with influential people in your niche. These may be popular personas, other bloggers, or just people with a lot of friends who love sharing interesting content in your niche. These relationships should be all about give and take, and success requires you to start with the giving. Learn more at viral marketing and social media marketing strategy.

Search Engine Optimization for Blogs

Your site should be optimized for discovery in the search engines. Be sure to include some posts on your site with a title centered around a popular keyword. Social also intersects with SEO because links to your site are a strong indication of relevance. Getting these links requires relationships with people in your niche. Once you get a few guest blog posts out on powerful blogs, you'll start to see some striking results.

Overall Blog Setup

Make sure that the blog is easy to use and pleasant to look at in all major browsers and mobile platforms. Ads may be an important part of your monetization but don't let them overpower your site. If people are only clicking on your ads by accident you'll get low conversions which will drag down your score and reduce your profit. Make sure that your on-site SEO is fleshed out. Include keywords in titles, in posts, and in links between posts. Don't design a site that will confuse the search engines.

Set Goals and Stay on Top of Them

One of the best things that you can do for yourself is set a schedule and stick to it. Devote a certain amount of time each week to brainstorming new ideas, building relationships, doing keyword research, writing guest posts, and writing articles.

Your schedule doesn't need to be overwhelming or extremely rigorous. It's more important that you're able to stick to your schedule than anything else. Eventually you'll start to realize which strategies are working best for you and your niche, and you can adjust your schedule accordingly. Rather than setting traffic goals or income goals, set tangible goals that you know you can accomplish. Set goals like numbers of articles written, amount of time brainstorming, number of emails sent, number of comments written, and number of social media messages sent.

These are realistic goals that you can meet every week, and they will guarantee steadily growing success if you stick to them.

About the Author: Jeff has been blogging since 2007 & contributing on many websites since that time. He is a professional internet marketing and blogging consultant. Jeff is also co-owner of  nPromote, SEO firm from Long Island.

All of a sudden these do-follow social bookmarks are just coming at me left and right. I have added these to the original post 50 Social Bookmarking Sites, which is now 65+ Social Bookmark Sites. Remember that social site links are a critical part of an overall link building strategy as well as the benefit of their ability to bring traffic to your sites.

Magnolia - Must Have! PR7 No-Follow Social Bookmark. No categories, just add tags. I just realized when editing my list that I had not put Magnolia on it, not sure how this happened, but this is one of the best Social Bookmarks for link building, even though it is a no-follow counts strong with Yahoo backlinks and when you join groups it can bring traffic to your sites, brought me traffic time and again.

Googletop - PR3 Do-Follow Social Bookmark. Various Categories. Googletop could have a few more categories for my taste, but it's a good one for link building.

Oopza - PR2 Do-Follow. Thanks to my friend Suzanne for turning me on to this one. Lots of categories, all though some of them are oddly specific. I found the submission process to be a little tedious since it did not automatically parse my Meta tag information, but worth the extra effort.

Lipstick - PR7 Do-Follow News Site. Celebrity related content only.

Dzone - PR6 Do-Follow News Site. Web developer related content only. Link is do-follow on inner page, not front page.

Plime - PR6 Do-Follow News Site. Categories remind me of Digg, so be careful what you submit, you might get banned for spamming.

Listible - PR5 Do-Follow. This one is different, no categories instead there are lists, find a relevant list and add your links OR if there is no relevant list you can create your own and add all related content to that.

Humsurfer - PR4 Do-Follow News Site. Submit anything, no category limitations. Primarily this site is an Indian community news site, (that is the country) all though I did find many US stories.

Care2 - PR6 Do-Follow News Site. Categories include, tech, green/environment, wellness, animals, off beat. Link is do-follow on inner page, not front page.

Hugg - PR6 Do-Follow News Site. Green related content only.

Shoutwire - PR4 Do-Follow News Site. Usual categories, tech, politics, biz...and then there is girls...where you find everything from Christina Applegate to Sarah Palin to Epic Boobs ...webmaster must be a guy!

Remember to anchor your links correctly with your keywords. Also, remember to submit deep pages and not just home pages especially to the bookmark sites.

Cool Anchor Text Trick for Deep Pages: When anchoring your deep pages you can use this format Page Title | Main Keywords, if your site title contains the main keywords then you are all good, if not, make it appear as if it does.

For example, my laptop site's main keywords are cheap laptops, so I can add a deep page anchored like this, Laptop Buying Guide | JR's Cheap Laptops. Some sites won't accept such a long title, but most do and this way you get your site-wide KW for every link.

Also, submitting to social sites can be very time consuming that is why I use this Social Bookmarking Submission Service to submit for me. It's a great service, submits to over 125 sites, really saves a lot of time and is very affordable.

Here's to Link Building!

Anyone have any more to add to the list? Leave the info in the comments. Anyone have a favorite(s) where they have seen great results?

Here is a list of 70 + Social News and Bookmark Websites. The Social revolution is hot on the net and these sites are great for Internet Marketing and some low level SEO, and can be beneficial in promoting your websites and content. They are not the best links in the world, but they are an important part of an overall link building profile.

Submit your website content and get backlinks, both dofollow and nofollow, promote your websites and expose your stuff to high traffic platforms.

The News sites, like Digg, basically allow you to submit news type stories and articles from your website to theirs and the members vote for them, the more votes the more exposure your submitted content gets.

The Bookmark sites are where you submit content/websites as a bookmark and the bookmark can be marked public so that other site members have access to your profile, bookmarks and a link to your sites.

You should also add these site's "add" buttons in your own sites so your visitors are given the opportunity to vote from within your own sites. You can get the buttons individually by visiting the respective sites one by one, or you can add an all in one bookmark that you can get the code for at AddThis. You can see this button at the bottom of each of my posts.

If you have lots of websites, or you want to save time, then use the service that I use to submit to many social sites for me, for as low as 19 cents per bookmark, check them out at, Social Maximizer.

If you Internet Marketing and Online Business specific social submit sites, please visit: 22 Social Sites To Promote Internet Marketing, Blogging and Make Money Online Content. Looking for More Do-Follow Resources, please see: 144 Do-Follow Forums By Niche and PR

DO-FOLLOW BACKLINK SOCIAL WEBSITES

Post On Fire - PR 4, Blog posts only, various topics.

Spotback - PR5 - Spotback has cool widgets to add to your blogs and websites for rating your content, simple little star boxes (see mine at the end of the post). Readers do not have to leave your blog, once they rate it, it automatically goes to Spotback! Also mouse over it and checkout how you can add tags without leaving the blog. Spotback has several options for widgets, as well as a WordPress plug-in.

Stumpedia - Best! PR5
Very easy submit, picks up Meta Tags and has a bookmarklet for browsers. A human powered social search engine with 100% do-follow links, add your home pages and all sub-pages, choose categories and tag with relevant keywords.

Squidoo - Best! PR8

Build some keyword rich content pages called lenses related to your sites topics and put 100% do-follow backlinks on them to your sites. Many of my lenses are PR3+ because they piggy back on Squidoo's page rank and the backlinks are very valuable.

Make sure to follow the lens building instructions for optimal success at: How-To Squidoo - Steps to Building the Best Lens for Website Promotion.

Wikidot - PR7

Build wiki's or mini sites on any topic and put in your do-follow backlinks.

Launch Feed - no anchor text, just URL. This one only allows you to submit your site once, so you can pick home page or a subpage.

Go Zoof -  PR4 - Bookmark

Searchle It - Bookmark

Furl.net - Bookmark

Spurl.net - Bookmark

Folked - Bookmark

Diigo.com - Bookmark

Connectedy - Bookmark

A1 Webmarks - Bookmark

Blinklist.com - Best! Bookmark

Mister-wong.com - Bookmark

Backflip.com - Bookmark

MyLinkVault - Bookmark

Jumptags.com - Bookmark. Highly crawled site, submit an inner content page for a new site and Google will find it and crawl quickly, which usually results in fast indexing.

Megite -  Bookmark

Buzz Tagz - Bookmark

Googletop - Bookmark

Oopza - Bookmark

Bibsonomy.org - Bookmark

Linkagogo.com - Bookmark

Buddy Marks - Bookmark

OYAX - Bookmark

Wirefan.com- Bookmark

Wagg It - Add your blog posts and site content

Get it Gadget - Fairly new social site with do-follow links.

Shoutwire - News Site

Listable - This one is a little different, no categories instead there are lists, find a relevant list and add your links OR if there is not relevant list you can create your own and add all related content to that.

Dzone - News Site - Web developer related content only. Link is do-follow on inner page, not front page.

Lipstick - Celebrity related content only (PR7)

Plime - News Site - Categories remind me of Digg, so be careful what you submit, you might get banned for spamming.

Humsurfer - News Site - Submit anything, no category limitations. Primarily this site is an Indian community news site, (that is the country) all though I did find many US stories.

Care2 - News Site - Categories include, tech, green/environment, wellness, animals, off beat. Link is do-follow on inner page, not front page.

Hugg - News Site - Green related content only.

DIZZED - Lots of categories, including Internet marketing, technology, entertainment and more.

WAGG IT - Some odd categories, and they are picky about choosing relevant ones for your content, but worth checking out.

Really Awesome People - PR2 @ $5 with your own custom personal page. This is Jim Kukral's creation, not sure if it's worth $5 but check it out and decide for yourselves.

StumbleUpon -  Boookmark - All possible categories - Lots of Traffic

NO-FOLLOW BACKLINK SOCIAL WEBSITES

Sphinn.com - Internet Marketing categories only

Yahoo Buzz - Yahoo's version of Digg without the attitude!

Plugim.com - Internet Marketing categories only

Del.ici.ous -  Bookmark - Lots of Traffic

Reddit.com - News Site - Versatile with many categories

Propeller -  News Site - Variety of categories

Digg -  News Site - Several categories, but they will easily ban for spam so be careful what you submit.

Slashdot.org -  News - Nerd and Geek categories

Technorati -  Submit Blogs

Twitter - Set up your profile, add your site, follow people

Tagza.com -   Categories: Science, Politics, Tech, Sports

Fark.com- News - Weird Stories and Articles Only

Newsvine.com - News - Categories: Science, Politics, Tech, Sports.

Swik.net - News - Theme: Open Source Software

Ximmy - News - Lots of categories

Health Ranker - News - Health categories only: Fitness, Nutrition, Diseases

Ka-Boom-It.com - News - Internet Marketing categories

Mixx.com - News - This one is great for fast indexing of your sites, just add an inner content page and Google will crawl your new site fast. Various categories.

IndianPad - News - Limited categories, Good for Tech type Sites

Fetch - News - Small business categories, including Internet Marketing

Danogo.com - News

Links Marker - News

Google Bookmarks - Bookmark

Faves.com - Bookmark

Netvouz.com - Bookmark

Music Movie News - For entertainment/music and movie related content only.

Blogengage - PR3 - Includes a 50/50 Adsense sharing. This one is easy submit with the browser bookmark button.

Wobblog - Lots of traffic there, can give good exposure for your websites and blogs.

Kaboodle - PR6.  Shopping site links, lots of members, especially female, good traffic!

Earners Club - Internet marketing related content only.