Viral {marketing}, in case you were worried, doesn’t involve viruses; the term alludes to the super-fast rate at which viruses spread. Viral {marketing} involves relying on techniques that will help spread your (promotional) message through a ‘viral process’ and reach a web-wide audience within a short amount of time.

Viral {marketing} has become the Holy Grail for just about any business with a small budget and big dreams. Give the public a reason to talk about them and they’ll get to spread the name of their business for next to nothing, helped by an army of happy gossipers. All you need is a place to start. {marketing}

A deliberately planned viral {marketing} campaign, one that has the aim of improving a company’s sales, needs three elements: content, distribution and response. {marketing}

The Content

Is the DNA of the virus, the element that encourages the people who receive it to react and pass it on to their friends. For many marketers, that means something cool and creative {marketing}.

Creativity might be fun but freebies are just as powerful, and they’re a lot easier. Let the world know that you’ll be handing out something for nothing and it won’t be long before people are rushing to tell their friends.

The simplest type of freebie is usually an eBook or downloadable report. Because these can be copied and distributed easily, they will be — provided that the information is high enough quality. It has to be usable, practical and valuable. An information product like that might not reach a massive audience but it should saturate your main market, putting your name in front of anyone who needs to know it. It’s also possible though to give away something that you know everyone will want.  {marketing}

The Distribution

For viral {marketing}, distribution has always been difficult. You could create the coolest concept ever but if no one sees it — or if only the wrong people see it — the virus won’t spread. Twitter has made everything a great deal easier by creating a network along which links and information can spread rapidly and effortlessly, but the old principle still applies: for your content to go viral, you still have to put it in front of the right people right at the beginning.  {marketing}

The Response

So if you’re planning to use Twitter to launch a viral campaign, you’ll need to make sure, before you launch, that your timeline is active, large and contains plenty of people who also have active timelines and lots of followers. Identify at least a dozen people who retweet regularly and post the tweet announcing your content at a time you know they’ll be active. That should increase the chance that your message will be passed on. Whether it will continue to be passed on along Twitter’s networks depends on the quality of what you’re offering and, on Twitter, the degree to which you can keep the campaign feeling personal.  {marketing}