Subscribe to the RSS feed?Oh heck yes. Well played sir/ma'am, well played.
Managing a viral campaign is a both an art and a science. To increase your success rate with viral marketing, make sure your campaign has all the following elements:
Timing - Often the most overlooked of all viral elements. Timing can make or break a campaign. You have to make sure that your idea is novel and that it’s different than other things (viral or not) happening at that time. Similar ideas or executions can lessen your impact and slow your spread rate, reducing your chances at success.
Incentive - This is why people will invest their time/attention/money in your idea. With all the clutter out there, campaigns and ideas that don’t offer any perks will be swept aside or ignored completely. The benefit itself can vary greatly, it can range from a discount to the fact that people look cool or “in the know” for discovering and sharing it with their friends.
Mystery - This generates the excitement. Unraveling your plan slowly keeps people interested, and it keeps them coming back as well. The key here is to give them just enough information to get them hooked, and then slowly release more as time goes on. The tricky part can be finding the balance between mystery and obscurity.
Ease - If it’s not easy to spread your idea, then it won’t be viral. It’s that simple. You need to do everything in your power to make it easy, or sometimes even necessary, for your idea to be passed along. Put in links for E-mailing, Digg, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Facebook, and anything else you think might facilitate sharing. Make it easy to talk about and explain.
I think the essence of viral marketing has been captured well here.
The key is always to keep it simple enough to execute and also spread ahead…
And at the time, not be intrusive and ‘in-the-face’ in nature.
You got it. It’s a balance between art and science. Thanks for reading.