Ways to Spread Your Message on the Blogosphere

“Viral content is what people bookmark. Viral content is what people talk about.”

At Techipedia , Tamar Weinberg knows her onions. But what’s this viral thing really all about?

Viral marketing is getting people to willingly spread your message for you.

Crafty,huh?

Word of mouth is king when it comes to disseminating your word across the blogosphere. You may not even know exactly how many people are talking about your stuff—until the traffic rolls on in, of course.

Why Go Viral?

• It’s speedier than Gonzales. The more people that promote you, the faster your message will spread and the bigger the spike in your traffic will be, like a giant snowball rolling down a steep hill.
• It’s cheap as chips. If you’re forking out for advertising, it’ll be a little more expensive, but as other people are doing most of the work, it’ll cost you absolutely nada once your stuff goes viral.
• Find hidden customers. You don’t even have to go looking for them. If you can get your message spread wide enough, they’ll come to you.
• Reduce negative comments by only spreading around the positive messages you get. People like to complain, and it’s way harder to rub out a negative comment than it is to bump up a positive one.

But How?

Unless you’re Harry Potter, it’s impossible to conjure up a great viral message instantly. It takes time, skill and a healthy dollop of luck to get there. There are things you can do to increase your chances, though. Let’s take a look.

• Make your content good—simple and obvious but incredibly effective. And make it relevant—as online social media ‘zine Smedio says, “It makes no sense to sell oranges to a customer who’s in the market to buy apples.”
• Give your followers something for free. Who doesn’t love a freebie? Just make sure it’s a good one—there’s no point giving the readers of your foodie blog one of those car air fresheners shaped like a tree. They won’t appreciate it.
• Want to make your guys work for the free stuff? Run a contest instead.
• Use bookmarking sites. If something you post gets rated somewhere like StumbleUpon, your ranking will go up—and even more people will see your post.
• Make a guest appearance on another blog. All of their followers will see you, and they may follow you back to your own blog if you can impress them enough.

Of course, it’s not all about getting people to come to your blog. You have to make sure it’s worth their while once they get there.

No matter how good your viral marketing may be, if your blog isn’t up to scratch your new friends won’t stick around.

Make sure your content is great and your blog can handle the extra traffic, and you’re golden.