Does viral marketing work?

I am experimenting with viral marketing to see if there is a way to get people to spread the word about my site. Some ways to do this are word of mouth, viral videos, linkbait articles. Has anyone here had success with viral marketing of some sort?

 

Not sure about other networks, on Twitter it will all depend on your following. If your following is into the stuff you have to offer, then yes, you can get your tweet go viral.

Something as silly as this can work:

Half woman half snake!!

Fav if it's real
Re-tweet if it's false

Visit us at: yourlinkhere.com

 

All content has the potential to go viral. I have seen peoples Facebook posts unintentionally go viral. You would just have to appeal to people's strongest emotions.

 

The easiest way for a page on your site to go viral is to wait for a new trend or a news to appear, so then you can take the action of "first teller" and so people will link you just because you are the only source. Using this method you get low quality traffic for few hours or days and the thing is that the links remain and continue to juice your page. This page should be used as a donor for your other pages so link your other pages on it with this in mind. In case of seo it starts to work average in month.

 

I agree that, although, you can drive a ton of traffic from Twitter, it's good to remember that IT IS low quality traffic. Don't expect huge conversions unless it's up in hundreds of thousands of hits.

 

This is actually an area I've just recently begun to venture into myself. It helps if you have a good sense of humor.

I think humor is strangely missing in IM for some reason. They learned the lesson early on in TV advertising. Think about it: What commercial from watching TV as a kid growing up - or any period in your life - is the most memorable, most stuck in your head. Betcha five bucks it was funny - am I right?

I read somewhere that humor sales better than sex - and I kinda believe it. And it has a better chance of going viral.

Take YouTube videos for example: If you're an online marketer doing SEO for an offline client and you want to promote their biz with a YouTube video and get it to rank, it has a better chance of going viral if it's funny. Also, one big tried and true method for ranking videos is with social bookmarking. But the bookmarking sites, often times, will delete bookmarks that they don't consider "natural". In other words, the idea behind social bookmarking is that people share things they like because they think other people will like them - an important element in viral marketing. But who really is gonna like a video that promotes five dollars off an oil change at Joe's Oil and Lube? That doesn't look natural, right? But - it does look natural if it's funny.

I'm actually working on some funny videos that I'll be putting up in the near future to promote some of my sites. If it goes well - and I'm feeling fairly optimistic about it - I might just start a humor marketing service.

 

It should, because it should be viral.
Perfect example provided by qwikad though.
Another one, 9gag, or meme.

 

I've heard of viral marketing, but I don't think you can make something go viral. It just happens.

 

Well yes and no. I mean, some things have a better chance of going viral. And you can always learn what has a better chance of going viral by looking at what has done so in the past. It's like anything else: Look at what has been successful and do what they do.

 

In my experience the content that is most likely to go viral on social media is content that is highly engaging and personal to people. They strike a chord with their audience and invoke that basic need in all of us to communicate our message with likeminded people. For example, a good story of hope and inspiration that people can relate to emotionally will have a great chance of going viral as it encourages the person effected to share with others with the hope of passing on that positive feeling.

 

I believe Quikad is right, generating traffic is one thing, good quality traffic is another. Going viral is all about trial and error, knowing your audience and the power of social media. Anything can be viral as far as it is posted at the right time to the right audience. Do not start copy and pasting other famous websites' material, most probably you would not be the only one also high probability that your audience has seen it already and just shows you as a noob copier.

 

Interesting, I would love to give it a try! Let us know if your strategy worked. I consider also that viral can be created, but to some extend. People wants to think they are the ones making the thing viral, not that some advertisement agency made them do it.