Viral marketing is a great way to generate massive amounts of traffic in a short time but unfortunately it is also very hard to know what will go viral and what won’t. Here are a few tips that will push you in the right direction. Don’t worry if it doesn’t work as well as you want it to every time. There are major companies with millions of dollars for marketing that also can’t get it right.

The most important thing is that it must be something that people WANT to share. This is usually something funny, weird or controversial. Also don’t forget about the age old favorite, sex. You can have a look on Youtube at the most watched videos and the majority will fall under these four categories. There are two things you absolutely have to get right in order for something to go viral:

1. Make people want to spread the word 2. Make it easy to share

Firstly, you don’t want to sell something in your campaign , people don’t share a sales pitch, at least not in the hundreds of thousands. The selling comes later, for now you just need something that people would want to share with others. Have a look at elfyourself.com This site generate huge amounts of traffic in a very short amount of time. It’s just a dancing animated elf and you can put your face on it and share it with your friends over Christmas. People WANT to share it because it’s funny and it’s Christmas so we all need a laugh or two after a long year. On the page after the “show” you get links to Office Max and special seasonal promotions.

Secondly, they make it easy to share. After you put your face on the elf, you get a unique URL that you can use to share this with your friends and family. You must give people an easy way to share if you want to go viral.

Here are some options you have when creating your piece. They are just suggestions, use your imagination here and go wild.

1. Funny or weird video 2. Funny Application (APP) 3. Controversial report 4. Parody ( One of the latest music video hit always does well)

Again , look at Youtube to see what goes viral and more importantly try to figure out why. You can use these viral strategies in marketing by making people want to share. The best incentive is money as always. You can promote an affiliate program or pay-per-lead program where people get rewarded for telling others.

If you have something great to share on your website like a very useful tip, use a tell-a-friend plugin to spread the word. Give away rebrandable reports, where people can add their links and send it to their lists. Hold a contest , but you need to have a great prize to play for, this will get people excited and peole share things when they get excited.

These are just a few tips for a viral marketing campaign. Use you creativity and play around with a few ideas, when you get it right all the hard work will be worth it.