If you ask the question of how to get more website traffic, you'll often get this response - 'go viral'.
Sounds interesting, but what does it actually mean?
How does it work, and is it effective? Well, that's 3 good questions, so let's take a look...
In the medical world, a virus self duplicates and spreads, increasing its' coverage everytime and being notoriously hard to stop.
Hence the term in the marketing world 'viral marketing'.
It was never really called that in the days before the internet took off, but the idea still applied way back then!
To break the concept down to its' simplest, you give something away that has value, is of use to others.
Whatever it is you give away has links to your website, or needs people to use your product.
In the giveaway, you build in encouragement for others to pass it on themselves.
The chain of people passing it on self perpetuates, all the time with your website being a core element of the giveaway.
It means your marketing message or website can be seen by a number of people that you cannot predict, and cannot control.
If successful, a viral campaign can create a flood of traffic which won't stop even if you wanted it to - a marketer's dream!
So, it sounds great doesn't it, but does it actually work?
The answer is yes, it most definitely does work - of you get it right it can be the biggest source of traffic to your website, and it can be done for free too!
You may choose to give away a product, a report maybe on the subject matter of your market.
You may choose to give away a service, maybe providing a neat twist to a software application.
You may choose to use a video, and this can really be exciting.
On the biggest and most well known video sharing site, YouTube, they give you magical help to make your video go viral.
You could make a short video about your subject, or even screen shots, and once you've uploaded it to You Tube, people have the chance to make comments on it.
If you can start an argument, you'll have people falling over themselves to watch *your* video!
People can put your video on any of their websites, and because it is free, and YouTube even provide the html code, it could not be easier.
Also, when the video finishes, YouTube will ask the person watching if they want to watch it again, or forward it on to others just by clicking a button!
This is almost too good to be true, but it is all there, and crushingly simple, quick and free to do, it just takes some of your time.
Let's not make any pretences, the first few times you do it, you'll make mistakes and take a bit longer to produce your video, but once you get the technique sorted, you can use video to go viral, and get a huge amount more website traffic.