The idea caught on and now there are 2 guys (it should be WeWearYourShirt.com).

Then comes a new spin on the idea – at SheWearsYourTee. I really like this one because a model will wear your tee. That means you get some killer product shots you can use on your site.

Another element is how the pricing works to encourage people to act fast and not wait. January 1st the price is $1 and the price goes up every day. It’s the same concept with another one of my favorite businesses using this model called LoveJingles.com.

I figured out the guy who started it made $18k in 5 days and continues to bring in more money and build more value for his customers each day as the word spreads. He signed on Yahoo! to advertise on their anniversary. I also like how he launched it by reaching out to 10 bloggers (I was one of them and didn’t blog about it but wish I had. I’m making up for it now).

Another twist is to make it personal – someone has a birthday or anniversary every day of the year. Someone gets married or engaged every day, has a baby, etc. What could you offer them? People also have news that you could promote in a similar way. You could be their social media billboard. I really like when it’s both online and offline.

Here’s another one with a new spin – product giveaways — AnyLuckyDay.com Now if the guys at Backcountry.com would just use this to market their sites like steepandcheap.com you can see how this idea can apply to businesses. The site has a deal on ski gear and once the item is sold it’s gone and the next deal shows up. Why not promote the current deal on social sites? At least a button to tweet about it.

Could you add this model to your business? Have any other examples for me? Leave them in the comments. Oh, and if you wouldn’t mind, could you tweet this post? Thanks!

The Digg Effect?

If you get a FP on Digg, and it gets you so much traffic it takes your server down because of 40-100k plus uniques to your site (from what I have seen) you are bound to get noticed by someone.  So looking at your sales, and seeing none should not be alarming.  You can get crazy traffic from Digg even if your story does not make it popular.  But if it does …

You just experienced the Digg effect. What is the Digg effect?  After your server recovers -

• People know about you now.
• They know about your site.
• They are going to be linking to your story. Yea Links!  We love links!
• They are going to continue to talk about you for weeks, More Links!!
• Other social networks may pick up your story and send even more traffic, links and saves.
• Digg carries a lot of trust.
• Stories rank well and push more trust to your site.
• You get added benefits from Alexa (crazy burst, and then steady flow of traffic)

What does all that do?

It makes ranking for the keywords you want to be going after much easier, and in many cases gives you additional rankings for those keywords you want to be ranked for.  With the added links, traffic and trust now pushed to your site thanks to Digg (and this viral campaign), it makes getting ranked for the keywords you want a little easier.  You now have some authority, and will continue to build it.  Once you are ranked for the keywords you are going after – that is where you will start to see the sales come in, and finally understand why all this was worth it.

Case Study

I want to share a case study that can prove all of this, and show you the power of what Digg can do for you.  It also shows how you can make money with viral campaigns.  Almost a year ago I ran a viral campaign for a drop shipping company called Wholesale Match sharing 10 Real eBay Success Stories.  They wanted to be found for the term eBay Success Stories – and almost a year later are still ranked on Google in the top 2 of the first page for the term (as of today) check out the screen shot:

Ebay Succes Stories

You can see from this next screen shot, this viral campaign has brought almost 33k unique visitors to the post since it was launched (not quite a year ago).  Believe it or not – that number is quite low, we have had other stories bring upwards of 110k uniques because of a FP on Digg.  If you go an take a look at the number of visits from other blog posts – not so impressive.  So you get the steady traffic, and they do make sales because of this.  They are a drop shipping business, and teach people how to make money on eBay – so its a no-brainer they are making money from this viral campaign.

This story probably would have even done much better but it didn’t stay on the Front Page very long because the users of Digg hate us SEO types, and anything they feel is marketing related.  There were to many haters because Wholesale Match had been making the Front Page to often I guess.  It just goes to show you that even in this type of a market Digg can stil be good for you, if your content is good enough – even with all the loser haters that abuse the system (bury) there was enough “real users” that enjoyed the article and ended up sending a lot of traffic and from the screen shots you can see the positve effect from all this!

Power of Viral Marketing Campagins

The Digg story/URL itself still ranks in the top 10 (#10) of Google for the phrase eBay Success Stories, as you can see from this screen shot below: This proves there is much trust and love from Google.  it helps you get two of the top 10 rankings for a keyword that you really wanted to be found for that (from what the owner has told me) converts really well.  Remember – all this was over a year ago, so it really does work well!

Digg gets your site additional rankings in the SERPs

I have just given you some insight to Digg, but there are many other powerful places that send massive amounts of traffic, links and trust to your sites because of viral campaigns that I have not explored here.

Finally

Viral Campaigns are powerful and they can make you make money.  I hope this post and case study has given you some ideas, or at least reasons why you need to be making viral campaigns a priority for 2009.  Once you really figure out the power, and the over all long term effect viral campagins have on your site, the only problem you will be left with is your ability to contain yourself from working on them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!

****Shameless plug***** – remember Dream Systems Media can help – Learn more via our social media marketing page.  Just fill out the form on that page, and we will get back with you shortly!

Steps

1. Formulate your messaging — determine exactly what you want to convey about your product or service. You want to convey the benefits of your product or service, not just the features, and don’t be afraid to get crazy in this objective.
2. Determine your method – are you going to produce a written viral piece or a video viral piece. Consider the elements involved such as costs, time, etc. and then determine what route you want to follow.
3. Load it up – this is the part where you make your viral piece connect with your customer on an emotional level. Touch their heart, or touch their funny bone, or something else that makes them think…I need to share this.
4. Don’t advertise – viral marketing is about sharing something that is funny, or is a great story. Don’t just think about advertising through your piece. Many of the best viral ads don’t even include a brand name or anything…it’s left to the customer to figure it out.
5. Publish the content – publish your viral piece to your website, YouTube, a blog, or a new website you build for the viral piece.
6. Make it easy to share – let people share your piece as easily as possible. Make it downloadable, sharable, allow embedding, etc.
7. Spread the message – do everything you can to share the message online and offline. Post to forums, message boards, social accounts, blogs, emails, etc. Basically get the viral aspect started.
8. Love the comments – reply to comments made on your piece. Don’t delete negative comments unless they are crude or attacking to others.

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Now here is the part I promised to be at the end…

THE KEY –

Make sure your viral piece is viral worthy. You can’t just expect people to share something that is ordinary or expected. You either have to come up with an idea that is excellent, or have some excellent tools you use in your business that can easily be made into a viral campaign. One example of these tools is from a hunting company in Texas, Rancho Bellas Rocas.

If you want to go hunting in Texas there is no better way than their way, as you can see from the pictures below, and no I wasn’t paid for this post…these pictures are just simply viral worthy so I’m sharing them.

Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet.[1] Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily.[2] Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages. The basic form of viral marketing is not infinitely sustainable.

The term “viral marketing” is also sometimes used pejoratively to refer to stealth marketing campaigns[4]-the use of varied kinds of astroturfing both online and offline [5] to create the impression of spontaneous word of mouth enthusiasm.

from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing

Learn by watching the best:

The Top 10 Viral Ads of 2008

Here is why I am so giddy about this.  Just before I left for my trip to Disneyland, my son was out in our garage and he was messing around with our cats pet carrier.  I went ahead and took out the old iPhone and snapped some shots knowing that it would be good material for a later date.  Remember this is me, the guy who can’t think about anything without trying to find a way to turn int viral.  Here are the pictures I snapped:

Here he is investigating (you can see the wheels turning huh)

Hmm, this looks like a cool place

As you can see he was quite pleased with himself

Now you can see why I was so happy to get asked this question!  When I took these pictures I was thinking to myself – These would do well for a person who wanted a viral marketing idea for pet carriers, and the title I would give it is:  “Well Thats One Use Of A Pet Carrier“, or “What To Do With Your Kids When They Are Out Of Control” and my favorite is you could find other funny things that people have done with Pet Carriers and title it “10 Uses Of Pet Carriers The Manufacturer Never Intended”

Some other funny ideas that I had came from my other experienced with Cats and pet carriers.  I would love to see crazy insaine Cats that don’t like to be put in carriers.  I had this one Cat that was like the Tasmanian Devil when you tried to get her into one of them carriers – it seriously was the only time I liked that Cat.  It was so funny to watch that thing freak out.  I would love a top 10 video post including videos like that with the title: “10 Of The Craziest Cats You Will Ever See Caught On Video” or “10 Cats You Never Want To Get Near”

I think you see where I would take this, but hopefully this gives you some more ideas where you could go with content.  With all the talk more and more about quality content and information on your site in order to get links instead of having to buy them, this would be your ticket to great content, leading lots of people talking and linking to your site.   That is the whole point of a viral marketing campagin in getting people talking about your site, sharing it with others and linking.  Generating that buzz that you need to help make your site more popular.

I think one of the most important keys to creating quality content, as well as viral campaigns is to make sure you are always thinking and paying attention to things around you.  What kind of information would you like to read, what kind of stories would make you laugh and make you want to share with others.  That is why I take a picture of anything that strikes me as funny, or why I am always writing my ideas down when I think I have some good ideas for content.  You have to think about it and be creative and make it happen.  It is not just going to fall into your lap.

Last night I was out playing with my kids, and the kids in the neighborhood when my son thought it would be a good idea to get his Tonka truck out and ride it down the hill (see picture).   It made me think of so many viral markering ideas all over again.

Thinking Like A Marketer

Pretty soon, all of the kids went and got their own Tonka trucks and it turned into a big ordeal of racing and having fun zooming down the little hill we have by our house.  They probably spent a good hour just zooming up and down this hill (yes they slept good).

If you remember from the original post, the reason I included the picture is because I was sharing a viral marketing idea to a toy website owner.  If you could find 10 funny videos, or 10 funny pictures related to kids and Tonka Trucks and title it “10 Ways To Play With Tonka Trucks That Hasbro Never Intended” or something like that it would probably do pretty well on social media sharing websites.  Plus, I was trying to share with you the concept of finding related ideas and topics, even if you are not selling Tonka trucks specifically, but you are selling kids toys. (see the relationship?)

My reason for re-visiting the topic is to give you some fresh ideas, and also remind you that you need to be thinking like a marketer in general, and not just a social media marketer.  You need to realize opportunities in front of you and take advantage of them, but you also need to make sure they are going to be opportunities that have lasting effect.  There are many viral marketing ideas that generate buzz but have no lasting effect, and this was re-emphasized to me by a post I read last night on promoting a new blog by Sugarrae.  Sugarrae talked about how amazing and long lasting viral pieces are if they are done correctly, but how worthless they are if done wrong.

My focus when I posted this about a year ago was to just to help give people ideas that would generate buzz that drove insaine amounts of traffic in a short period of time (for sites like Digg), as well as building a lot of links in the process.  I have since learned if the campaign is more thought out then just a viral “buzz generating” peice that could do well once, it has a much longer lasting effect that will drive more traffic and build links for longer then just a couple of days.  When done right, I have seen traffic from social media sites years after the campagin was launched, more traffic from search engines because the story ran, and links that continue to pile up because it was just that good and people keep finding it (and talking about).

Things change, Digg changes, other social media websites change, rules change, but there is one thing that stays consistant – and that is if you create a good viral marketing campaign it will do well no matter what the rules are, or who the power social site, or major search engine is at the time.