This post is by Michael Pollock, the original owner of Small Business Branding. Yaro Starak now owns and produces the latest content for this blog.
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Viral marketing has been around for a while, and with the advent of the Internet it’s become a key marketing strategy for large and small businesses alike. Wikipedia has this to say about it:
"Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that seek to exploit pre-existing social networks to produce exponential increases in brand awareness, through viral processes similar to the spread of an epidemic. It is word-of-mouth
delivered and enhanced online; it harnesses the network effect of the
Internet and can be very useful in reaching a large number of people
rapidly."
New daddy and savvy solopreneur Dane Carlson recently executed a text-book viral marketing strategy that dramatically increased the traffic and in-bound links to his Business Opportunities Weblog.
"Boy, what a difference a month, a million extra visitors and over ten thousand new links make:
"On October 10th, when I launched the How Much is Your Blog Worth service my weblog was worth* $125,327.88. Today, it’s over $5 million!
"Not to toot my own horn, but I’d call my little viral marketing experiment a success.
I remember a few weeks back reading that Dane had rocketed to #7 on Technorati’s Top 100 Blogs list. He’s since dropped off the list, but that’s really unimportant. What’s important is the Dane Carlson brand now exists in the minds and RSS readers of many more people than it did two months ago. And that’s really all we’re wanting, right? To be known; to exist in the mind of our market; to have the opportunity to exchange value with the world in some way.
When you think about it, that’s what all strong brands do over and over again. Take Apple, for example. Every few months they launch a new product, and everyone talks about it. In some ways, that’s viral marketing. They have iTunes, and every day millions of people download music, audiobooks, podcasts and whatever else Apple has to offer. Then they tell all their friends about it. In some ways, that’s viral marketing. Heck, nowadays, the iPod itself is viral marketing.
I realize I’m stretching the definition a bit much here, and you could probably use many of the cool marketing buzzwords to refer to my examples above (e.g. word-of-mouth, purple cow). But the point is strong brands are built upon not just a few nuggets of value now and again, but many nuggets of value delivered consistently over time. It’s great that Dane got a huge boost of exposure with this clever viral marketing tactic, and you didn’t see him sit back and take a month off afterward.
Hopefully, you’ll excuse the sports analogy, but Dane’s viral was a home run. He still shows up at his keyboard each day crankin out singles and doubles to further build and strengthen his brand. And I think that’s probably what I’m taking away from his example. Focus on consistent base hits, and occasionally swing for the fences.
Thanks Dane, and congratulations; both on your success and the birth of your son, Franklin Stuart Montgomery Carlson.