The start of Day Two at #BlueGlassFL: attendees were slightly more subdued than the morning before.  Folks came shuffling in the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino searching for coffee, carbs, and coveted power strips. As everyone settled into the ballroom, Chris Winfield stepped up to the podium to greet the audience with an affable, “So did anybody get lucky last night… at the gaming tables?” (Minds out of the gutter!) Nothing like a jolt of humor to warm up the crowd.

Chris handed the show over to Brent Csutoras, who introduced the panel– Brian Chappell, Social Search Strategist at Ignite Social Media, Chris Bennett, Founder at 97th Floor and Amy Vernon, Director of Viral Marketing Strategies at BlueGlass Interactive. aimClear live-tweeted this session, filled with expert insight & killer takeaways. Read on for full coverage…

Viral Marketing 101: Components, Mechanisms, Techniques
Brian kicked things off, diving into viral mechanisms and seeding strategies. He pointed out that unlike traditional marketing, by which companies develop & execute promotions that cause brand-awareness, viral marketing is about target audiences marketing the brand themselves.

3 Main Components of Viral Marketing
There are three main ingredients in any viral marketing campaign. Of course, the campaign must begin with content- the thing you want to go viral. But as Brian argues, ”Content alone is NOT king, seeding and promotion tactics of said content are king.” No matter how clever, catchy or cute the content, it will likely remain static and unnoticed if viral mechanisms are not made available and if the content is not adequately seeded. Every successful viral marketing campaign, therefore, must pay mind to:

• Content
• Mechanisms
• Seeding

Viral Mechanisms
Brian highlighted a variety of viral mechanisms that span & incorporate prolific platforms, both on and off-line:

• Forwarding to friends
• Links in widgets
• Affiliates
• Facebook likes
• Twitter Retweets
• Free give-aways
• Automatic address book importing

“Viral Mechanism Integration isn’t rocket science,” said Chapell.  Initial steps can be as simple as adding “tweet this update” functionality into email campaigns… encouraging customers to become post-purchase advocates with Facebook and Twitter sharing buttons.  A bounty of awesome tools await clever marketers looking to connect with their networks & communities.

Seeding Techniques
From traditional to high-tech, holistic to sponsored, online to in-person, there are dozens of techniques & approaches you can consider while seeding content. Here are some of the most popular:

• Press release
• Community outreach
• Pay Per Click
• Banner media
• Email lists
• Word of mouth
• Friends/family
• Status updates

The ultimate goal with this initial seeding is to have it germinate (pardon the pun…) into second level seeding, during which audiences pass the content onto the rest of the community and beyond (the nooks & crannies marketers aren’t always allowed in or aware of – coffee talk between fans & their friends). Second-level seeding is the jumping off point for viral marketing… but it’s difficult to achieve this if initial seeding isn’t properly executed… if it’s not, precious time creating content has been totally wasted.

“When it comes to seeding, go BIG or go home.” -Brian Chappell

Seeding Success Factors
Here are some concepts to keep in mind when devising & delivering your viral content:

• Make your content easy to transmit… the easier your content is to share the more likely it will go viral.
• Remind users to keep coming back… offer them some kind of incentive to return to your website or social pages.
• Develop a formula and stick with it.

Long story short: “Make content travel on its own with baked-in viral mechanisms, and make content travel far with seeding techniques,” Brian Chappell concluded. That’s a heck of a triple-threat strategy for successful viral marketing.

Chris Bennett was up next to share his take on viral marketing, beginning with the characteristics of viral content.

Viral content is…

• Simple
• Clear
• Concise
• Informative

Chris then laid out his Viral Marketing Rules to Live By:

1. Don’t reinvent the wheel.
2. Social success is hard enough to mimic. Take what’s already out there and make it better.
3. DON’T SELL OUT YOUR BRAND!
4. It’s not necessary to stoop to crazy stunts and outrageous behavior.

Go The Extra Mile with Graphics
Never underestimate the power of a good-looking graphic. Graphics make for great viral content, especially if they are aesthetically-pleasing, come complete with good data & information and communicate complex ideas with ease. The ultimate goal with graphics? To take the complex and make it simple and easy to share. As Chris points out, it’s the “ah-ha” moments that will go viral.

(Sure, it’s not in English, but… Wow, info! Wow, pretty!)

Chris’ go-to formula for viral marketing campaigns: test, track, repeat. And one of his final pieces of advice to the crowd: build relationships with those that link to you.

Wrapping up the session was Amy Vernon, who took the podium to discuss the direct value in top social media communities for viral marketing.

In with the In-Crowd?
Amy emphasized the concept that not everyone needs to be a part of every community. It’s just not feasible. Find the online community that works for you and be there. Listen, share, interact and be awesome. Amy’s advice is to first be a good member of the community before anything else… social groups don’t invest in members that aren’t invested in the group. Some of the most amazing communities Amy highlighted included Tumblr, Digg & Facebook. Oh yeah – those are some hot spots for sure.

Viral Community Success Stories!

Tumblr

• Garfield minus Garfield

• NPR

• These assets don’t necessarily deliver mass traffic, but the audiences are generally of good quality & highly engaged. (Hello, 95 reactions!)

Digg

• Amy started developing her personal brand on Digg.
• “It it weren’t for Digg, I wouldn’t be here today,” she professed.
• She’s got 11k+ followers on Digg in and of itself, let alone other social channels.
• Yeah Amy, I’d say that’s an awesome success story.

Facebook

• Food&Wine on Facebook transformed a large passive following into a large engaged following.

• Starbucks utilizes social media outlets at an outrageous level.

So which platform is the best? Amy emphasized the importance of taking time to develop & understand your social objectives in tandem with researching the different platforms. Pick the one(s) that would best align with your goals as well as your brand & personality. It’s worth it to get educated.

Thanks to this lively panel for great advice on successful viral marketing. Stay tuned for more session coverage from BlueGlass Florida right here at aimClear blog!

As the American Economy gives more and more recession indicators, marketing budgets are going to hold even at best and most likely will shrink this year.

Smart marketers know that Viral Marketing aka Word of Mouth Marketing (WOM) can be an inexpensive yet HUGELY effective means of getting your message out.

The Igniting Viral Media Session, Day 1 at SES San Jose was jam packed with great information on how to make your viral campaigns more effective from some of the search industry’s top viral marketers:

Chris Winfield CEO of 10e20,

1) When blogging think beyond the traditional WordPress or Blogspot to twitter.

2) Social networking is more than Facebook and MySpace. International sites like Bebo have a tremendous reach in their markets.

3) Don’t forget video when thinking WOM. YouTube has made online video much easier now. Users can upload view, discuss and share video clips.

4) Use forums and groups. This is probably the most powerful yet most overlooked opportunity. Forums are filled with niches of people who want to talk about what you do. If something goes truly viral you’ll see tons of traffic from these niche sites.

5) To find the most popular forums use http://big-boards.com/ for most popular forums

6) There are social news and bookmarking sites like Digg Delicious and SU in every niche. If you identify the niche sites they can be used to help spread your message.

7) Digg can be utilized for the spin off effect that it creates. People use Digg to find the content. Then they bookmark the content and it goes popular on delicious, etc. Plus media use Digg to find story ideas and good content.

Top 10 Types of Content that have an opportunity to go viral:

1. lists for example the most famous list ever is the 10 commandments
2. how to’s i.e. martha stewart
3. surveys’ i.e. US News
4. Comprehensive posts – give people something that they would want to link to.
5. something with a strong opinion – take heed though. It can go viral like crazy but may go viral in a way you don’t want it to.
6. best of’s
7. calculators tools – stuff that helps people to do stuff better, easier
8. video – must be interesting. will it bend takes a boring industry and made it interesting
9. widgets – make it easy for people to put on your site (easy for link building)
10. quizzes and badges – create fun quizzes that people can put them on their sites and link back to you

9) Make the sites work together. Upload to Digg , then use SU, Forums, etc to promote the Digg Submission.

10) Make sure you have good hosting. If something does go viral you want to make sure that your site doesn’t go down due to the traffic spike it gets (i.e. the Digg Effect).

Justilien Gaspard of Search Engine Watch:

11) Consider your Objectives before you select a strategy. Most content doesn’t go viral. What is your goal? To get the attention of journalists? To get links? or to create a buzz? Each of these will have a different strategy.

12) Use an Influence the Influencer’s Strategy. Identity who influences the space and where do these people get their news? This is where you need to start building relationships.

13) Consider your approach. The most common approach is simply to contact people of influence. But typically your most influential online personalities is also approached the most from people who want something from them. A much better approach to cut through the clutter is to develop relationships with them in advance so when you do contact them, they know who you are and you have a relationship with them. This can be done by send them info, supporting their blog through comments, etc.

14) Consider hiring a cartoonist to write a cartoon people (including influencer’s) would want to link to.

15) Hire a high profile guest blogger to write about you. Although this may be costly, typically it will be worth it for credibility they provide. Further, they will often promote their guest post on their blog too.

16) Have a contest. Hire influential “guest bloggers” to judge it. Plus, a great alternative prize could be dinner with one of these People of influence as opposed to your typical plasma tv or trip.

17) Do interviews – Interviews with Experts, CEO’s, & VP’s often they will help to promote the piece too.

18) Do joint research to create white papers, reports, surveys, etc. Team up with someone of influence i.e. if you’re a local business the chamber of commerce to partner with you on the research. They will then help you to promote it.

19) Consider your existing relationships. Generally email and cold calls won’t work with People of Influence who are tough to connect with. If you can, use friends of friends to get through the gate keepers.

20) Enlist your customers to help spread the campaign. Tag a link to the campaign on customer correspondence such as in your email signature, packing slips, etc.

Fionn Downhill CEO of Elixir Interactive:

21) We already know that 78% of people trust “recommendations form consumers” (Neilson Global Survey). But online WOM is different than traditional WOM in that instead of a few people being influenced by their friends, with online WOM now they’re telling thousands of people. The viral effect is so strong, that in some cases you can see a correlation between stock prices and blogosphere activity levels.

22) Using web 2.0 takes time and strategic planned approach for success. You must put your information in the places people are looking. But apart from time, viral marketing does not have to cost much.

23) Free Offers tend to do well virally. i.e. give away products or services

24) Make it really easy for people to share your info virally

25) Make sure your viral campaign scales easily. I.e. if everyone cashes in your offer will it bankrupt you? Or if it generates a lot of traffic will it crash your server?

26) You can ENABLE viral but you can’t CREATE it. So what other tactics help you to enable viral? Forward to a friend, bookmark this page, RSS, add this .com – sharing graphic, etc.

27) Utilize YouTube by setting up your own branded channel and optimizing it.

28) Amateur video tends to do better than polished corporate content. Flip video camera makes it really easy to shoot video, down load it and then upload to YouTube.

29) Use a video distribution service like TubeMogul to upload your video content to many sites. These services also allow you to pull a report on how many people viewed the video.

30) How to measure success of a viral campaign?

1. RSS Subscribers
2. social bookmarks
3. comments on your blog
4. links to your site by social media
5. what blogs forums are saying about you
6. monitor referring links
7. track email usage

Jennifer Laycock of Search Engine Guide:

31) Coming up with viral content is great but it’s even better when it ties back to what you do.

32) Know your customer. Marketing Campaigns are all about delivering the goods however you can’t deliver if you don’t know the customer’s desire. Monitor forums, twitter to find out what they’re saying.

33) Try Try again. Most viral efforts don’t take off; every try improves your next marketing campaign.

34) Do something outrageous i.e. Blendtec will it blend video

35) Create or embrace controversy – warning this tactic isn’t for everyone.

36) Look at your analytics to determine which type of site send the best visitors (not just traffic but also time on site, pages viewed) this will helps you know where to feed content.

37) Anticipate campaign costs under different scenarios. i.e. Starbucks had a promotion that was so successful it cost them too much and they had to cancel it.

38) Have established relationships with people that you want to champion your campaign. If you want to use social media then you need to have profiles on social sites and have established relationships with the users of those sites that you want to champion it.

39) Must Do’s before pitching a potential online influencer:

1. read at least five of their posts so that you know more about them.
2. comment on one or two of their existing posts
3. don’t use a form letter, write at least one or two sentences that are unique to the person. ie. read their twitter feed first and then say something that makes it clear that you’ve invested a few moments in them before you ask for something of them.
4. make sure your pitch addresses the person by name, and that you have the right email address (not webmaster)
5. be completely transparent – let them know who you work for
6. spell check your message
7. ask yourself if this pitch is really relevant to the online influencer’s readers
8. check to see if they have a policy about accepting pitches
9. if you pitch multiple writers at the same site – let them know so that you don’t waste their time.

Bonus points from the Q & A:

40) Viral marketing and buzz marketing can mean the same thing don’t get hung up on definitions

41) The best way to come up with good ideas is to identify a problem that your customers want to solve. Spend some time on forums and see what problems people are talking about so you can create a campaign around it.

42) Viral doesn’t have to get on David Letterman to be considered a HUGE success. It’s about building your business by reaching your people in a new way without having to pay for it. At the end of the day we really just want people to talk about your product.

43) What can you do to combat a negative viral campaign?

1. Be prepared in advance for if you do get heat over something. i.e. have something prepared to say already (here is why we did this, this is what we meant to say, here is our thinking behind it)
2. If you’ve actually screwed up admit it and apologize. You must be honest online.

You can’t make a campaign go viral but following tips like the points covered in this session will help to make sure that you’ve enabled your campaign’s viral qualities.

Jennifer Osborne is VP Business Development for Search Engine People a Toronto SEO Company