So what is Viral Marketing? It’s really just a method to get your message out to as many people as possible by word of mouth. In other words the idea is to spread your message like a computer virus would spread.

“Infection” in this case though is a good thing; in this context it’s people becoming aware of you and your website.

Now the actual message can be in many formats, from an email, a video, an audio file, and more. The idea is to get people who already have your message to spread it to people they know, multiplying your message spreading exponentially.

First, let me make it very clear that I am not talking about sending Spam out to millions of people. Apart from the legalities of doing this, sending spam is just crazy, because it is not wanted, and is certainly not going to spread is it, and after all if it makes it past the spam folders and actually makes it into someones Inbox, it’s just going to get deleted when it is read isn’t it (that’s if it even gets read).

Here we go with what seems the topical phrase of all my articles, “Relevant Great Content”. Yes nothing has changed, you need to give value to people who have received your message so that a) they may want to take action with it, and b) forward it on to other people.

So how do we get people to do this? How do we get people to actually pass on your message to someone else?

First things first, it has to be something relevant and useful. In other words it has to have value, wether real or perceived. The person who has received your message has to believe it will give value to someone else (and/or them!) before they will pass it on.

One thing I have found in this industry is the power of partnerships; it’s a lot easier to get you message out there if you have friends in the industry with large mailing lists of their own.

Lets pretend you have released a new e-book. You currently have a mailing list of 1000 people who have expressed an interest or actually purchased something from you in the past.

Your e-Book is, of course in a related niche so you feel sure you can generate some interest in your mailing list so that is the first place to attack.

Now you do have an affiliate program in place don’t you? Read up on the details of why you need an affiliate program in the affiliate article, as this is a vital step because decent affiliates will market your product to their mailing lists and contacts, and this is the power of viral marketing!

When starting to look more at website promotion; it pays to do a little research first as a good way to move forward fast!

Let’s say you have 100 affiliates and each have 1000 customers on their mailing lists. Suddenly you have leveraged on your affiliate and your message is broadcast to 100,000 people in addition to your 1000 people in your mailing list.

Taking it to the next level imagine if your affiliates have affiliates of there own, see how the numbers can grow exponentially?

Now this example is about affiliates, but there is also no reason with the right message that you can’t get your customers doing the work of the affiliates by forwarding your message on to their friends.

In these cases the primary motive is not making money, but it may be because they think your product is great and a friend would benefit from it, or they just think it’s cool and want to tell the world.

Ahhh the power of word of mouth advertising, I tell you there is no more powerful force in advertising then getting your customers telling their friends how cool, hip and fantastic you and your products are (I’m sure you’ve told all your friends about me, haven’t you?).

If you can get customers telling your friends about your product and then once they sign up they tell their friends well you can see that it will take no time at all to have a huge response to your message!

You’ll be needing to buy new servers for your website because the old one has melted with the overwhelming traffic you have received (did you like how I got a reference to my website in between the valuable content?).

Ok Tim, I hear you saying I get the message that this Viral stuff may be handy, but how can I actually use this stuff on my site.

Well firstly, a great technique I used is included in with the master Mike Filsaimes Butterfly Marketing product this has Viral Software included for people who can easily pass on information about your site to other people. They actually automatically get a box to enter friends email addresses, etc.

Pretty well no other method will get you more traffic than Viral traffic because let’s face it, Viral traffic is effectively word of mouth advertising (assuming you have set it up properly). Some of the coolest sites on the Internet exist and grow in member sizes every day due to these techniques.

Here is another fantastic way to get your name “out-there” and get people visiting your website.

PodCasting!

Podcasting is Audio (and/or Video) that you create on your computer (or via other means, and then load onto your computer) that you then share with other people to listen and/or view.

There are large numbers of Podcasting sites that allow you to upload your audio or video presentation, and then attach a description and information about the presentation. Once this is done, people who visit these podcast sites can “find” your podcast and hopefully if it is interesting enough to them, they will subscribe to your “feed” (similar to a mailing list, but for audio/video) and then be automatically notified whenever you release a new audio or video.

Now generally the “feed” is not controlled by you (unlike a regular mailing list) but rather is controlled by the podcast directory and a podcast “reader” which is software (often free) that you can use to automatically check whether new content is available for your selected “feeds” and to then get downloaded automatically.

You can then watch or listen to the downloaded presentation at your leisure, copy to your iPod, etc. it’s really fairly cool.

One of the biggest names in PodCasting is iTunes. No doubt you’ve heard of iTunes and maybe wonder what it is. iTunes is software that is supplied by Apple (the Mac people) that you can download for free and it will manage all your podcast “feeds” as well as your music and video collection on your computer, and even allow you to buy music (and podcasts) via it’s iTunes store.

Apple have versions of iTunes for both Windows and Mac and it is completely free to download.

Now iTunes is big business, ten of thousands of people download stuff from it every day, so this is probably the first site you want to try and get your podcast listed on.

Many people claim to be experts in the area of targeted website traffic. We suggest you do some careful research yourself first before jumping in.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, first things first, lets discuss what you could be putting into the audio / video.

If your like me, and have a great face for radio, don’t despair. You don’t necessarily need to produce video content, audio is perfectly acceptable for many subscribers, as it’s something you can do (listen to) anywhere (although with video iPods available these days this is also true for Video).

First and foremost you presentation should be adding value to your listeners/viewers. A hard sell sales presentation won’t be worth much to listeners/viewers (at least probably not to those who’s first experience of you is via the audio/video), rather it should be quality relevant content that will appeal to listeners with an interest in your niche market.

Bear in mind that it’s highly likely that when you upload a presentation for inclusion in iTunes, it will be reviewed manually by a human, and if it’s just a hyped up call to action to buy something chances are they may not approve it for inclusion. And even if they did approve it, listeners are going to be turned off when they hear it especially if you have not previously built up a relationship with them.

I suggest an interview is a great idea for a podcast. Put together a set of questions and answers to common problems that you “solve” on your website, and have some one interview you. Save the audio file and then upload to iTunes!

Another idea (once you get a few podcasts completed) is an overview of your product or services, but again not a hard sell, but a detailed list of what you can do or case studies on how you have helped other customers previously.

Just remember it needs to be interesting to listen to, so make sure you target it to your customers needs and to be solving problems that your potential customers may be facing.

You may find iTunes will want a series of podcasts before adding you to their directory, so it would be a good idea to do 2 or 3 podcasts if possible and then submit them to be included as a group.

If you plan to host your podcasts yourself, be very careful and consider if you have another bandwidth to do so, particularly if your feeds get picked up by lots of people.

Because of the nature of podcasts (audio or video) the files can end up being huge, so It’s very important that you plan this out in advance as you may find once you get successful and have a reasonable number of people listening to your podcasts, that you will be putting your server in meltdown and be running out of quota. This may mean your ISP closes down your website!

Don’t be victim to this, plan for getting bigger from day 1, and assume you are going to be successful and put the right steps in place so you have sufficient bandwidth when things take off.

Either put all your efforts into getting listed in iTunes or other large Podcast sites, or if your going to do it yourself, invest in a reasonable PodCast hosting company who specializes in Podcasts.

A decent alternative to iTunes for hosting your iTunes (especially if your have trouble getting iTunes to actually accept your podcasts is a company called Liberated Syndication. I would suggest you check their website out, they are one of the best out there, and give great value for money and in some cases it’s free.

Remember all podcasters had to start somewhere, and some of the bigger ones actually have paid advertising now (where sponsors pay the podcaster for an advertisement to be placed in the podcast). This could end up to be a really nice little money earner for you as well as provide great value for your listeners.