The Viral Effect
Filed Under (Blog Lessons) by Jon Hook on 19-05-2008
What is the viral effect?
The viral effect is typically defined as a measurable outcome of the degree to which the recipients of a communication refer the offer, products, services or company to others.
Similarly, viral forwards amount to the number of referrals sent and viral responses are the number of recipients who received the referral, opened it and actually clicked on a link.
Viral Blogging
Many bloggers sometimes consider it as a best option to spread the word about their blog themselves. However, this is only to realize, that in the longer run, a viral approach is much more result-oriented, letting the reader spread the news.
Undoubtedly, this ends up being a relatively much more powerful approach for creating blog awareness and popularity.
Viral Techniques
One of the most popular and frequently followed viral blogging techniques is to use ‘email a friend’ links on websites and below blog posts. This specific technique makes the word go around in multiple forms.
The act of using this link by a single blogger triggers off a chain of awareness as the further recipient is also likely to fill-up and forward the information ahead.
Another major viral technique favored and practiced by most of the seasoned bloggers is the preliminary targeting of their audience. This technique entails offering an extremely interesting and compelling story/feature to the section of readers for whom the topic is most relevant.
‘Sneezers’, as such people are known as in some of the bloggers’ jargon, get so excited about the blogs that they themselves start broadcasting the novelty of the content. It’s not surprising then that these ‘sneezers’ ultimately turn out to be the most vocal and proactive agents of viral effect.
Syndication, one of the relatively less known viral techniques is also worth to reckon with. RSS feeds, personal content syndication and functionally syndication are some of the most prominent viral techniques in this category.
Other Methods
Other general viral methods include:
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Blog post advocating a social cause
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Blog content promoting a product or service
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Offering free tools on sites
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Blogs breaking major news
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Using catchy language (for instance, “Shout it”, “Digg It”’, etc.)
The Hotmail Example
Any discussion over the viral effect deserves a detailed account of its illustration in the case of the ‘Hotmail’ mail service. Years ago, the ‘Hotmail’ service added to the bottom of every mail sent, a simple tag/link saying - ‘Get Your Private, Free Email from Hotmail at www.hotmail.com’.
All what the non-Hotmail users had to do was to click the link, fill in a few details and there they had their own account, further enabling them to spread the ‘Hotmail’ link.
Interestingly enough, blogging itself is widely recognized and accepted as a viral technique amongst small businesses, which benefit largely from the awareness and popularity thus generated.
