Viral marketing and Link baiting

It’s a sneaky tactic to getting links, but the basic idea IS to give people what they want. They get something, and in return they give a link. This is the focus of today’s presentation.

I quickly understood in this session that the biggest hurdle in creating viral content is not the creation of viral content – it is being okay with associating your brand with something controversial. The idea that you can go out and say, “here’s my thing, it’s funny, now buy stuff” will turn off people like a light switch.

Everyone wants viral content – it creates a tidal wave of word-of-mouth that can jump off line if it is very successful, and make your company a household name – and at least get you a few new visitors coming to the site to see what all the hubbub is about.

To do this, though, you simply must let go of your brand. Clean, polished and reliable are great attributes for a company’s brand and are exceedingly boring.

It is possible to create content that does not run afoul of your brand, of course, but the goal should not be to protect yourself. If you really are concerned about not tarnishing yourself, a viral campaign simply isn’t for you. Doing so without giving anyone anything they want, you are inching precariously close to spamming a public site, and that will be FAR worse for your brand than any video of a chicken that does what you tell it to.

Here is the full breakdown of the session on SearchEngineRoundtable.

About the Author: Eric Reid

I am the Social Media Services Manager for Off Madison Ave. I've been with the company since 2006, when I was hired to do SEO, and link building in particular. When social networking sites started cropping up, at first I started using them to create backlinks - but they weren't the best for that, given all of the "nofollow" attributes. However, I did see the potential for all of the direct referral traffic they represent. Since then I've been actively pursuing both tactics for clients: Links that can help them for search, and social postings that get them involved in the conversation. It's about the coolest job you could ever get. ;)