Your #1 Most Valuable Viral Marketing Tool: Your Own Blog!
Posted by Katie Farrar on Thu, May 08, 2008 @ 09:27 AM
As I was pondering what to write about this week I scanned my brain for innovative viral marketing campaigns I'd come across recently. Then I got bored with my thoughts and started Googling cool new images to spruce up my own blog appearance. (I'm keenly aware that it's seriously lacking in visuals, but it's all about the content right?)
But... I digress. So in my ADD style surfing I came across this Businesweek article posted on October 18, 2005. The author, Stephen Baker, basically compares the blogosphere to a virus saying that while some or most tend to just teeter and die out, the very elite catch on and become passed around all over the world.
Baker was right on! Blogs, if done right, are the #1 tool to help you launch a viral campaign. They are a viral campaign themselves! Think about it, today we have hundreds of social networks, social bookmarking sites, and social news sites whose content is fueled by blogs. If you're able to figure out how to make your blog innovative and remarkable, you will be rewarded by other bloggers linking to your content on their own blog, summiting your article to Digg, StumbledUpon, Reddit, etc, and leaving comments to tell you what they think.
Blogs are also one of the most effective ways to create content that is frequently crawled by the search engines. Because most blogs are content rich (and content is king in the internet marketing world) they are generally ranked fairly highly in the organic search results for the topic they are about. For example's sake, take the first part of the title of this blog, "Your #1 Most Valuable Viral Marketing Tool" and put that phrase into Google. I will almost guarantee you that my blog appears in the top organic search results.
*Disclaimer* I know some of you reading this post know all this cool stuff about blogs and blogging, but a lot of my friends and family (and hopefully some other readers!) are not as aware of this stuff as I am, so I think it's important to point out some interesting facts.
Baker wrote his blog in 2005, that was almost three years ago. In the internet marketing world that's a loooong time. I'm not sure if the term "viral marketing" was even main stream then. I think it's so cool to look back and realize how far we've come with blogging strategies and how much the readership and authorship of blogs has exploded even within just the past few years. Some would even say that it's caught on like a virus. (Ok, well no one would really say that, but it goes with the theme)
Let me just wrap up by saying this. If you work for/own/market for a company/business/etc. and you haven't started blogging yet you should at least be thinking about it. If you've been thinking about it... start writing! There's no better, more trusted way to reach your target audience of buyers and customers to start spreading your message. If all goes well... it may just take off like The Bird Flu.
Are you blogging? Are you using your blog to spread viral marketing messages? Leave your comments below and share your blog and your stories!