Targeting Viral Campaigns by Season

Some of the best viral marketing campaigns succeed for reasons such as uniqueness, but many times (and this is mostly the case with e-cards) seasonal demands call for it.  E-cards for example are always in demand for every season, especially when you are a lazy sob like myself and forget to pick up a real card from the local Hallmark.  Anyways, I’m swinging off-topic.

Let’s get back to the point of this post, targeting a viral marketing campaign by season.  Last year my friend Mike and I set out to put together a wonderful inspirational piece that would guaranteed be passed along to thousands, if not millions, especially around the Christmas and Easter seasons.

Mike had mentioned he had seen a cool screen saver that depicted some inspirational words, pictures and sounds.  This thing could be passed along person-to-person easy and in no time flat…certainly a viral attribute to any campaign.  Anyways, being the flash designer that I am, Mike and I decided to put words into motion by taking the inspirational poem "Footprints in the Sand" and setting it to some great music and imagery.  Take a peek for your self here.

This viral campaign was to accomplish a few things.  First, inspire the viewer to want to pass this site on to a friend AND provide a means to do that.  Second, make the viewer aware that this wonderful presentation could be viewed by them at anytime by installing it as a screensaver which they could purchase for a small fee.

Totally viral in my book…but where does the seasonal deal come in?  Well, this inspirational piece of work is known to be uplifting in times such as Christmas and Easter and therefore is viral by default.  The best thing about this viral campaign is that I actually feel that viewers are passing along a piece that I feel is worth passing along, unlike some of those emails that our parents forward to us in their first week of being online.

Viral Facebook Applications

If have not already created a Facebook applications, then you are seriously missing out.  The Facebook application framework (APIs available for .NET and PHP) is so forgiving that creating a viral Facebook application can be done in minutes.

Creating the app is one thing, but creating a viral application is the primary purposes of spending any time on creating one.  Brady Communications took the simple, yet effective concept of the snowball application and applied it to paintball!

With the snowball application, you can throw virtual snowballs at your friends.  Sounds silly, right?  It is! But it is brilliant and the app spread virally like nobody could have ever imagined!

Brady Communications applied the same viral concepts of the snowball applications and applied it to the sport of Paint Ball!  So rather than throwing snowballs, you can shoot paint balls at your friends.  What makes the Brady viral Facebook application cooler than the snowball application is that your screen gets plastered with paintball splats.   Pretty cool in my book.

Upon the launch of the paintball viral Facebook application it gained 1000+ user the first weekend alone (when web traffic is typically slower).  The viral application helped doubled the client’s Facebook fan base.

Tony Rocks for President

Web 2.0 for Business

Web 2.0, finally is all the rage for big business, but does it really make sense to take advantage of all the social elements of Web 2.0 for your company? That depends on what you feel you can offer that could be a collaborative fun-fest. Yes, it is a good thing to put in the means to allow surfers to spread the word about your company, but unless your company has something cool, interesting or intriguing to send around, then nobody will interested.
Whether you sell robots that carry groceries for you or you are simply a typical brick and mortar type of business, there is always something cool show others. I’ve put together a few examples of what is good/bad to push out in the social world of Web 2.0.

Joe’s Bathroom Fitter Company –

Joe has a bathroom company that places new covers over old and deteriorating cast iron, fiberglass tubs. Joe wants to take advantage of social bookmarking to get the word out about his company.

Won’t Work: Joe’s webmaster submits a page or two of the website to Digg, StumbleUpon and a few other sites. He feels that there has to be somebody out there who is interested in refitting their tub. BUT what Joe doesn’t realize is that basic tub marketing is completely boring to the ADHD crowd of communities such as Digg. Webmaster submits the page with the title of “Modernize Your Bathroom with a Bath Fitter Today!” This would be a waste of time.

What MAY Work: Joe’s webmaster flips through a photo book of all past work done for customers, finds the most hideous looking bathroom photos, looks around the internet for some of the most “extreme” bathrooms and creates a special page containing these items on Joe’s Bathroom Fitter website. Webmaster then submits this cool page to the social networks. Webmaster submits the page with the title of “World’s Most Expensive Toilet!” Stuff like this spreads virally and could increase your web traffic, which may also increase your presence in the search engines.