Easy and Inexpensive Strategies for Making Big Profits from Your Blog
What is viral marketing and how to apply it to your blog
Web 2.0 – Blog Viral Marketing Landscape
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Viral marketing is an idea that spreads – and an idea that while it is spreading actually helps market your business or cause (blog post, video, report). Something being viral is not viral marketing itself. Who cares that 100,000,000 people saw your video or blog post if didn’t market you or your business in a tangible, useful way? We have to feed our families at the end of the day so we want our viral marketing campaigns produce something of value – traffic, trust, respect, followers, sales…
Blog Viral Marketing Formula
Traffic is a blood of your online business. Targeted traffic = Money (of course you should have something to sell or recommend in order to make money) But before we jump into traffic generating strategies lets get one thing straight – traffic is useless if it does not convert. You want your visitors take action – comment, subscribe to your list/RSS feed, read your posts, click your affiliate links, buy products you recommend, link to your blog… In order to make it happen you need to have a GREAT content (Provide value first then ask for sale). Viral content is awesome for traffic generating purposes. So, let’s take a look on how to create viral content and how to use it for your blog marketing.
Here is the formula for blog viral marketing:
Viral Content + Smart Marketing = Epic Traffic.
TOOLS YOU’LL NEED
SYNND
Automate Online Marketing with SYNND
Content, inbound links and social activity are three major ranking factors for search engines (Especially Google). When you combine all 3 of these elements you have a recipe for high search engine ranking and visibility – therefore targeted traffic, leads and sales.
SYNND is a tool that automates inbound links, traffic and viral component by syndicating promotions of your content to hundreds of members all over the world. It is a great tool to ignite viral spread of your blog content and rise over the noise in social networks.
Imagine having hundreds of people promoting your content across the Web through votes, bookmarks, comments, ratings and article distribution. It only takes a few minutes to set up a campaign but the net effect is up to 360+ man hours of promotion on every piece of content you post. I am a big fan of automation so I run SYNND promotions for every piece of content (article, blog post, video) that I publish online and I don’t have to worry about backlinks, traffic and visibility it is all done on autopilot. See detailed SYNND review here.
Content is King
If you post good content people will regularly visit your blog looking for more great posts, bigger websites will link to you, people will spread your message virally – bringing you even more traffic.
Viral Content Formula
How to Create Viral Content That Brings 1000’s of Website Visitors – 3 Step Formula
If you want your content to be spread like wildfire across the Internet bringing you hordes of traffic, follow “3E” rule – create content that is Educational, Entertaining or Enlightening or all three.
Here is how to get an idea what kind of content creates buzz in your niche:
- Go to Digg and search for your niche keywords – this will give you an idea of what people think is news worthy. Look for items that have a lot of diggs – 500+.
- Go to Delicious and search for your niche keywords – this will give you an idea of what people think is helpful and save for future reference. Look for items that have been bookmarked by a lot of people – 500+.
- Go to several popular Forums in your niche (Google search niche + forum – “dog training forum”). Look for most popular threads that have a lot of views and replies (simply sort by number of views or replies). This will give you an idea of what topics are popular and what people really buzz about.
Create Swipe File
Create a swipe file (record of the successful / viral content in your marketplace). A swipe file is just a folder or excel spread sheet you will store on your computer which will allow you to quickly reference the content that you gather from your research. Swipe files are NOT for plagiarizing or stealing content, they are for you to brainstorm and back engineering so that you can follow the lead of success. Again, it is wiser to follow success than to invent failure. Always remember this rule and you will be farther ahead than majority.
Develop Your Content Strategy
As you find content that creates buzz in your marketplace (using 3 step formula above), make notes to yourself about what topics you will use to engage your visitors. By back engineering of the most successful people in your marketplace you will have an advantage in knowing what to cover and how to cover it in order to rally respect, trust and traffic your way.
Here is what you need to do:
Create 3 columns in a spreadsheet (as a suggestion):
1. Content idea source (URL)
2. Question to ask or idea to propose in order to engage people
* This stimulates your mind to figure out how you would use the subject matter to engage your audience in conversation about the topics you will cover on your blog (buzz building).
3. Brief summary of topic for your reference
NOTE: Don’t forget to add content you discovered to your swipe file for future reference. Building a good swipe file will ensure, that you always have something to go on rather than inventing everything from scratch.
4. Go ahead and prioritize your topics in the order you feel would be best for you and your target audience.
5. Go through your content ideas spreadsheet and organize your topics from the top down in the order you will publish them. This is merely a suggestion; pick the process that works best for you. The most important thing is mapping out what you will write about on your blog in advance. How far you go in advance is up to you.
It is not uncommon to find that you will have to break some subjects up into a series of blog posts. Keep in mind that each topic you add to your “line up” should be able to be covered in 600 words or less. If a topic requires more than 600 words to cover, break it up into a series.
Make sure your content brings value in life of your visitors – solve their problem, inspire them to do things, make them laugh… If you provide this type of content you will have tons of traffic.
Viral Internet Marketing
Now that you know how to create killer content, it is time to promote it. Below are proven strategies that will drive high quality, targeted traffic to your blog:
