Methods of Viral Marketing

Telling Friends

This is probably about one of the most classic ways of doing this. Anything that has gone viral thousands of years ago was simply started by people telling friends. It is how folklore and things of that nature spread over time. Doing this online is the same thing. You'd be surprised how fast things spread in emails that are sent to friends. I'm sure you've got emails that are sent to hundreds of your friends with funny pictures and links. That is the purest example of viral marketing. Something as simple as a "Tell Your Friends" link on your webpage can help a lot.

Blogging

Blogging is a very popular way of getting something to go viral due to the RSS feeds and pinging. If you link to another blog, they'll see your ping back. If someone is subscribed to your blog and they like your content, they'll put it on their blog. What you'll see today is that one blog will break a story or create a unique piece of content and it just spreads across the blogosphere. Millions of blogs pick up on content like this in a matter of days. Even if you have a blog that is relatively unknown, it is easy to get known. You can go to any related blog, leave comment with your link.

Social Networking

Social networking is probably about the newest way to make something go viral. It sort of fits under the category of telling a friend, but I think it deserves its own category. When you tell a friend online through a social networking site like Digg, Facebook, Scribd, etc you're really "shouting" or sharing with your friends. Simple articles have gone viral on Digg in a matter of hours. Websites end up getting so much traffic that their website crashes. That is how big social networking is right now.

Videos

With the emergence of major video websites people have been able to communicate online through a different means. Video has existed online for a long time, but it has been the last few years where it has grown into a phenomenon. Any stupid, funny, slip up and educational video is easy to put up. You don't have to be an expert to do this. If your video entertains a lot of people it will spread around. Videos online today are getting more traffic than regular news sites. It's big. The great thing is people are looking for more great videos and you can submit it to many directories.

Podcasts (Audio)

Before video become popular on the internet, it was the podcasts that had the viral exposure. I think what made this type of content popular was that it was easy. People could just lay back and listen to it. If people liked it they'd send off the audio to others.

Email

I'm sure you've seen the free email services that put a nice little signature at the bottom promoting their service; well you can do the same thing. If you email a list of people, make interesting emails that are full of buzz. Tell your readers to forward the messages to their friends. Telling them may seem trivial, but you'd be surprised at how many people will do what you tell them.

Article Directories

This is how things spread in the good old days of the internet. It still is a great way to do things. Articles are submitted to directories and other website owners will pick up your content. They'll link back to your site through a bio box, so they're not leeching off of you. Normal articles will get sites that will use them, but if you create a good buzz worthy article you'll have thousands of websites picking it up. The readers of those websites will email their friends and talk about it on their own blogs. You should be able to see how fast this spreads.

Website

Your website is the only central part of all viral marketing. There is no point in doing any viral marketing if people don't come to your website or link to your website. The great thing about it is that once you have something go viral, you'll have readers for a longtime. They'll visit your site, even if you have nothing that interesting to talk about.