Viral marketing is simply good old-fashioned word of mouth by way of the internet. Remember that in the old days if you had a satisfied customer you could be sure that the customer was going to share information about your product and their satisfactory experience. Well, this can also happen for you online.
How does having your blog shared with hundreds of people with little effort on your part sound to you? I bet it sounds great! So, let’s discuss eight ways that you can get good old fashion word of mouth to work online for you.
The first thing that you can do to make your blog go viral is to offer something really useful for free in your opt-in offer. Free gets the attention of just about everyone who sees it. Posting the blog itself is a time that you give information for free. Don’t be afraid to offer information for free that readers would normally have to pay for. You want the reader to really feel like they have gotten something for free. (If you sell information then don’t give away all of your secrets or the consumer will not have any reason to buy from you.)
The second thing that you can do to make your blog go viral is to offer really good content. Content is still king. If you offer thin content with information that can be found many other places on the web then there’s a good chance that people will not even read it in its entirety and certainly will not share it. So, do your research and try to offer content that is not found in many other places.
The third thing that you can do to market your blog virally is to offer long form content. It has been proven on several occasions that articles of 2000 words or more get shared more often than articles with 1000 words or less. The NY times at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/science/09tier.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1404101650-Z4G6KABximvrpkKLebburg published that longer articles are more likely to be emailed than shorter articles.
The fourth thing that you can do to make your blog go viral is to use pictures. The Huff Post did a study on whether pictures in a blog post increased the number of shares to Facebook. The result is that two times the amount of people shared blog posts that have at least one picture in it.
The fifth thing that you can do to market your blog virally is to invoke emotions. A study was done on the 10,000 most shared articles on the web. The finding was that the most shared of these articles are articles that invoke laughter, awe, and Joy. The least shared articles were articles that invoke sadness and anger.
The sixth thing that you can do to make your blog go viral is to use lists or infographics. Posts with lists or infographics are shared more often than videos and how to posts. Infographics are attractive to the eye and make it easier for readers to take in large amounts of information. Lists also makes it easy for readers to take in large amounts of information at a glance. Many people think that 7 is the lucky number, but lists of 10 actually won out for the most social shares.
The seventh thing that you can do to market your blog virally is to make sure that your writing looks credible. Articles that have a bio in the resource section received more shares to Google+, Twitter, and LinkedIn. This is believed to be because we use these three mediums for professional use.
The eighth thing that you can do to make your blog go viral is to repromote your old posts. Wait a week after promoting your blog or article and then promote it again. This tactic has been shown to increase the times shared to more than 100%.
Some of the facts for this article were taken from the Huff Post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noah-kagan/why-content-goes-viral-wh_b_5492767.html. I wish you all the luck possible with your viral marketing.