Viral Marketing Using Folksonomies (Tagging)

Today we are going to talk about folksonomies (tagging) as a viral
marketing tool.

Folksonomy (also known as collaborative tagging, social
classification, social indexing, and social tagging) is the practice
and method of collaboratively managing tags to categorize
content. The fairly new consumer phenomenon is called "tagging". Tagging
is powerful because consumers are creating an organizational
structure for online content. Folksonomies not only enable people
to file away content under tags, but, even better, share it with
others by filing it under a global taxonomy that they created.

Here's how tagging works. Using sites such as del.icio.us - a
bookmark sharing site - and Flickr - a photo sharing site -
consumers are collaborating on categorizing online content under
certain keywords, or tags. For instance, an person can post
photographs of their iPod on Flickr and file it under the tag "iPod."
These images are now not only visible under the individual user's
iPod tag but also under the community iPod tag that displays
all images consumers are generating and filing under the keyword.
Right now Flickr has more than 3,500 photos that are labeled "iPod."

You can also use Digg.com. All of digg's content is created,
submitted, and judged by its audience. If your page, blog or online
article is good enough to be "dug" by digg users, you could
receive literally hundreds of unique visitors immediately. The best
thing about digg is that it is so popular that many submissions can
instantly dominate some keywords on search engines like Google.

Another site is Technorati.com. If you have a blog, Technorati
should become one of your favorite search engines. Because
many Technorati Tags are beginning to dominate the search
engines. You can easily add your blog to technorati's tagging
system. Just like digg, even if you only happen to get a small
amount of traffic from technorati it will increase your site rank in
the search engines.

There are many sites that can help you with "tag syndication."
Web applications like TagCloud integrates RSS and tagging
while wikipedia.org is method of allowing social webpage and
content development.

Tagging is catching on because it is a natural complement to
search. Type the word "blogs" into Google and it can tell if you
are searching for information about how to launch a blog, how to
read blogs, or just what. Large and small sites alike are already
jumping on the tagging train. They are rolling out tag-like structures
to help users more easily locate content that's relevant to them.

Here are some other sites that you can visit to start using tagging
as part of your viral marketing campaign.

A1-webmarks
http://www.a1-webmarks.com/

All My Favorites
http://www.allmyfavorites.net/

Ambedo
http://www.ambedo.com/

Blinklist
http://www.blinklist.com/

Socialmarker
http://www.socialmarker.com/

And that is a very short list. There are literally hundreds of sites
that you can use to increase your visibility through tagging. I especially like to use socialmarker.com, because it allows you to instantly add your information to multiple sites without visiting and manually submitting to each one individually.

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Viral Marketing Using Mobile Devices

Mobile devices, mobile phones and PDA's are one of the last
great frontiers of viral advertisement opportunities. However, we
have become experts at filtering everything, our air and water, our
e-mail and pop-ups, and our mobile devices as well. We are good
at filtering.

The very idea of unwanted advertising streaming through our
Blackberries is annoying. Mobile devices are the ultimate opt-in
medium and, therefore, a great way for marketers to connect with
users, if that's what the users want. "WANT" is the key word here.
How should marketers approach the medium?

There are three main ways to achieve this. They are:

1. Offer exclusive content. Anyone can offer ringtones. It's the
unique content, such as exclusive mobile images of new brand
concepts, that drives interest and calls them out in other media
like e-mail campaigns, newsletters, websites, etc. So a wireless
campaign is most effective when it offers exclusive content for
wireless devices.

2. Make it useful and timely. Think about what would be handy
and helpful to have on a mobile device. Last year, for example,
Food Network enabled Sprint customers to download shopping
lists for their Thanksgiving dinners. There was a lot of "Sprint-envy"
going around among non-sprint customers.

3. Clearly define objectives. Usually, one of two business
objectives drives successful mobile experiences: incremental
revenue of brand intimacy. On the intimacy factor, a text message
usually takes priority over almost any other form of communication.
Why? Because we haven't yet been saturated with mobile spam,
and this is what causes us to prioritize wireless messaging over
voice.

Mobile marketing has been out there for a while but we marketers
have new territory to explore. Video offers fantastic opportunities
for engagement. Consumers already bypass their filters for highly
useful or entertaining content and will do so for rich exclusive,
compelling content.
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Viral Marketing Using Forums

Forum marketing has been touted as a kind of free, organic, viral
marketing. But because so many marketers go into forums purely
with the intention of marketing products or services, their actions
and attitude unwittingly causes the exact opposite of the desired
effect.

Forums aren't marketplaces, but when used as such, the
marketers' actions become offensive and will only inspire the
wrath of fellow members and marketers, not to mention
moderators who can ban them from the site with the click of their
mouse.

In order to be effective, this kind of marketing carries a certain
degree of commitment, responsibility and respect.

The first requirement is to take a personal interest in the main
topic of the forum. Not only does that mean visiting it regularly, but
it also means developing a good relationship with both other
members and the moderators, as well as taking an active interest
in helping others. Of course, it also means abiding by and all rules
that exist.

By doing this, you can develop a reputation and, since it is human
nature to work with a trusted colleague, business will naturally
develop from this.

This type of marketing has already suffered some abuse and
because of this, many forums have recently developed stringent
rules designed to protect their members from abusive or overly-
aggressive marketing tactics. One forum grants .sig files only after
a member has created one hundred valid posts and another has
disallowed ads in sig files altogether.

Marketers must respect that the purpose of a forum is to be a
platform to exchange ideas on a given topic. It is not there to
advertise products and services. By focusing on the topic and
posting questions and answers, your reputation will grow and this
creates the potential for sales naturally.
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Creating Viral Traffic Using E-Books

An ebook that includes your marketing message and a link to
your website is a proven technique in viral marketing. This method
uses the multiplication effect to "explode" the distribution of your
message by willing participants.

This is the same basic principle that was used by Hotmail to get
established and grow into a household name. When the two
founders set up their free email system, all the messages that
were sent by subscribers had a text message at the bottom which
identified Hotmail as the origin. People who sent emails to their
friends advertised the free email site.

One of the best reasons for using viral ebooks as a marketing
method is because it is cheap. It doesn't take long to set up and it's
even quicker if you use rebrandable ebooks that have been written
by others.

Finding ready to go viral ebooks is pretty easy. Just use your
favorite search engine and do a search. You will find more than
enough rebrandable ebooks that are available on whatever
subject you are interested in and that apply to your e-business.

One method of distributing the ebook is to offer it to visitors in
exchange for subscribing to your newsletter. If they pass it on to
their friends and family it will promote your business for you.

Ebooks are capable of reaching a large audience and are limited
only by the enthusiasm of the participants.

Ebooks are fairly easy to create. It's possible to produce your
own ebooks by combining articles that you have written or have
gotten from public domain sources, such as directories.

A common approach is to use material that has private label
rights, including articles and reports that have been written
specifically for that purpose, for that niche. Using a portion of a
larger work that you have prepared such as the first three chapters
of a large ebook could also be used as a viral ebook.

Using ebooks as a part of your viral marketing campaign is one
of many techniques that will have a cumulative effect on your
business, by attracting more customers, subscribers and targeted
visitors to your website. Start using them and you will soon find out
that this is an excellent way to increase sales and awareness too!

Start your Viral Traffic Campaign Now!