In preparation for our teleseminar Tuesday March 6, I did a little Wikipedia reading about viral marketing. I know how Greg got 32,000 readers to his blog in two months, and I know how he captured the attention of Slashdot and the NY Times.
So I know viral marketing works - I mean it REALLY works! If you can find a hook, something that captures the minds and imaginations of people, they will spread it around the Internet like wild fire. And who knows what can happen. Greg landed a two-book contract.
Denise and I will interview Greg to find out how he mounted his successful campaign, and to see if that sparks any ideas...or viruses. You can get information here: www.blogsquadteleseminars.com/viral.
What I really didn't know was the history of viral marketing. Who started it? Here's what I found out:
1. Some argue the term "viral marketing" was originally invented by Tim Draper and coined by venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson of Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 1997 to describe Hotmail's e-mail practice of appending advertising for themselves to outgoing mail from their users.
2. The first to write about viral marketing was media critic Douglas Rushkoff in his 1994 book Media Virus. The assumption is that if such an advertisement reaches a "susceptible" user, that user will become "infected" (i.e., sign up for an account) and can then go on to infect other susceptible users. As long as each infected user sends mail to more than one susceptible user on average (i.e., the basic reproductive rate is greater than one), standard in epidemiology imply that the number of infected users will grow according to a logistic curve, whose initial segment appears exponential.
3. An even earlier reference can be found in Richard Brodie's famous book, Virus of the Mind. Brodie worked for Bill Gates at Microsoft, who was quite aware of how information could spread quickly to win an argument and then a market.
The hook is... well, finding the hook. It's capturing the attention of people who engage in creating something, or reading or looking in the case of a video, or listening to something fascinating...so that they spread it around for you without even knowing they are marketing for you.
Often the goal of viral marketing campaigns is to generate media coverage via "offbeat" stories worth many times more than the campaigning company's advertising budget.
The term "viral advertising" refers to the idea that people will pass on and share interesting and entertaining content; this is often sponsored by a brand, which is looking to build awareness of a product or service.
These viral commercials often take the form of funny video clips, or interactive Flash games, an advergame, images, and even text.
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