Viral Marketing

The blog post How to Create Triggers That Get People to Spread Your Ideas was the introduction of sorts to a webinar I listened to earlier this month, Viral Marketing: How to Create a World Wide Rave.

Both venues made these cogent points:

"Nobody cares about your products (except you)...What people do care about are themselves and ways to solve their problems..."

"No coercion required...When you've got something worth sharing, people will share it..." The webinar example was a dentist who created a free e-book, Healthy Mouth, Healthy Sex! and ended up more than quadrupling her gross while allowing her to drop her expensive Yellow Pages ads.

"Lose control...Yes, you can measure success, but not through business-school Return On Investment (ROI) calculators." Think of the Grateful Dead, who allowed and even encouraged recording at their concerts.

"Put down roots...If you want your ideas to spread, you need to be involved in the online communities of people who actively share." A great story about an "unsalable" book about Alzheimers that ended up a New York Times best seller because the author became involved with the Alzheimers community.

"Create triggers that encourage people to share. When a product or service solves someone's problem or is very valuable, interesting, funny, or just plain outrageous, it's ready to be shared." The New York Islanders hockey team not only encourage their fans to blog, the team gives the bloggers opportunities to interview the players.

Point the world to your (virtual) doorstep.

Oh, and play nice.

Incidentally, as of December 2008, 11% of online American adults said they used a service like Twitter or another service that allowed them to share updates about themselves or to see the updates of others.