Viral Traffic Secrets Blueprint
Viral Traffic Secrets Blueprint
1 Copyright © 2012
Viral Traffic Secrets: The Blueprint
2 Copyright © 2012
Viral Traffic Secrets: The Blueprint
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Table of Contents
Facebook Marketing….....……………………….................pg. 52
Free Facebook Marketing Strategies; How to Wall Jack the Most Popular Pages; Making Paid
Facebook Ads Profitable; Split Testing and Its Benefits
Twitter Marketing…..........……………………….................pg. 66
Attracting Twitter Followers; Hashtags and Trending Topics; Retweeting Strategies; Tweeting
for Success
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In other words, like a virus that attacks your body’s immune system,
under optimal conditions, your message can reproduce on the internet
exponentially so that it suddenly attracts worldwide attention. While viruses
that attack the human body or a computer virus that targets hard drives are
considered to be bad things, going viral with your marketing is a very good
thing, indeed. That’s because it means your message is being propelled
through cyberspace like a rocket, landing on increasing number of
computer screens, laptops, smart phones, tablets and other devices every
minute.
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One of the first people to realize the full potential of viral marketing
used it to get one of the most prestigious jobs in the world: President of the
United States.
Beginning with Facebook Fan Pages and branching out into Twitter
and direct messaging, Obama reached out to all corners of social media to
recruit and energize followers, but built the framework for a viral online
marketing blitz that remains one of the most successful in internet history.
But politics isn’t the only arena that has been able to harness the
power of viral marketing. Companies such as the fast food chain Burger
King also have reaped the benefits of the internet’s free tools. In 2004, the
company released a short video called “The Subservient Chicken” to
promote a new chicken sandwich. The video featured an actor in a chicken
suit who would follow the commands that were typed in by viewers. Like
the sandwich it was designed to promote, internet users ate it up and the
company’s website was swamped with millions of new visitors within only a
few short days.
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The music industry also has used viral marketing to create something
out of nothing. In 2001, 13-year-old singer Rebecca Black created a low-
budget video for a hyper-catchy song she had recorded called “Friday”.
Although the lyrics were inane, the ear candy quality of the tune made it
irresistible for internet users and Black soon found her video going viral,
eventually attracting an astonishing 60 million views on YouTube, which
was more than 11 million more than the latest video by Lady Gaga, who
was the most successful pop act on the planet at the time.
Most often, viral marketing takes the form of video clips, interactive
Flash games, web pages, eBooks, text messages, emails, images, brand-
able software or adver-games. The most commonly utilized transmission
vehicles for viral messages include pass-along based, incentive based,
trend based and undercover based. But because viral messages tend to be
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highly creative and unique, there are endless potential forms and vehicle
through which the message can be sent.
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But when this type of promotion is shifted online, the results can be
astonishing.
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2. At the top of the paper, write the name of your business or product
3. Beneath this, write down the top 7 or 8 things you personally like best
about your business or product. Don’t think about it too much, try to
write as honestly as possible.
5. Finally, write down the one thing you love most about your business
or product
What you have is your passion list. This is what should motivate you
whenever you write or talk about your business or product. In the midst of
the working week, it’s often easy to forget what inspired us to get involved
with our work in the first place. You passion list can serve as a constant
reminder so that you can sustain that enthusiasm and help build excitement
for your product or business during every point of contact with customers.
Some people find it helpful to frame their passion list and hang it
above the computer they use for work. Others keep it with them in their
wallet or purse so they can refer to it when they are out speaking with
customers. Whichever method you choose, make sure you refer frequently
to your passion list so that you have a constant reminder of why you are
doing what you do.
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For example, let’s say your local church youth group is sponsoring a
car wash to raise funds for an upcoming retreat. Under the 20 th Century
model, you would create a few handmade signs, have a few teenagers
wave them at passing cars on a busy street and hope for drivers to notice.
While this may be effective on a highly-localized scale at attracting a few
dozen customers, it doesn’t allow supporters to push the message on a
more global scale.
Under the 21st Century model, you could create an entertaining 30-
second video promoting the event, ask the group’s members to post it to
their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, and watch it take off from
there. In this example, it is conceivable to boost response from a few dozen
cars to several hundred.
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Besides tapping into people’s passion and providing a format that can
be easily shared the last key viral marketing strategy is to incentivize your
message’s promoters. While a certain number of your customers will call
attention to your business simply because they genuinely like it, far more
will do so if there is something in it for them.
For example, the owners of Taco Town, a taco stand in Fort Worth,
Texas, wanted to drive mid-week lunch business so they posted a notice
on the business’ Facebook Fan Page that offered a free taco during
weekday lunchtime hours to anyone who “Liked” the post on Facebook.
Because the page’s 300 subscribers already were supporters of the
business, the first generation response rate was high, about 30 percent, or
90 people.
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While not all viral marketing campaigns need to follow all six of these
rules, the more that you include in your campaign, the more successful you
can expect it to be.
1. Offer something of
value – While the first
generation of people
who receive your
message are likely
already going to be
open to your promotion,
subsequent generations
may not know anything
about you or your
business and, in fact, may already hold opinions about your product
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or brand.
When you offer something valuable, the people after the first round of
users are going to be more likely to pick up your message and pass it
on to their circle of social influence.
What you offer doesn’t have to have monetary value. In fact, given
that viral marketing can potentially result in a tidal wave of responses,
it’s better if there is no cash value to your offer. But giveaways such
as special reports, eBooks, instructional videos, access to online
webinars and other high-value/low-cost items can incentivize the
recipients to redeem your offer and pass along your promotion,
improving its chances of becoming viral.
But the free tools offered by the internet have leveled the playing
field, allowing even the smallest businesses to compete on equal
footing with the biggest competitors. Anybody can post a video, a
photo, an audio recording, a slideshow or any number of media that
can be seamlessly and efficiently passed on to other users with the
push of single button.
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control measures on your offer, you can help adjust the speed of its
growth as it progresses through the web.
Know your intended audience and how they are likely to respond to
various stimuli, and you can improve your chances of going viral.
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The first and most important is that you have to know who your
audience is and what they want. This can be simplified with the use of
Facebook Fan Pages, online forums, the use of squeeze pages and even
on-page and off-page Search Engine Optimization techniques.
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Viral marketing costs far less than other forms of advertising on the
distribution end, but the production quality of whatever you are promoting
should still be as high as you can afford to make it. If you post a shaky
video with poor production values on YouTube, odds are it isn’t going to go
viral because it’s too difficult for people to watch it. Similarly, if you offer a
free eBook that is poorly written and inaccurate, odds are your intended
audience isn’t going to want to pass it along to other people they know.
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Think about the most successful brands and the images they
immediately spring to mind: Quaker Oats, Ford Motor Company, Las
Vegas, and the Rolling Stones. Any product that has been successfully
branded will instantly evoke an emotional
response from the user – for better or worse.
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about Las Vegas, you think about a fun, exciting place where you can go to
let your hair down and go a little crazy.
When creating your brand online, it’s important that you provide a
consistent, positive message that your prospective customers can
associate with your company and products. What are the core values of
your company and how can you communicate these to your customers?
What sort of emotional shortcuts can you use to evoke this message
quickly and effectively?
Once you identify a product niche for you to work in, remember that
the definition of a successful niche is one that has a lot of customers,
includes a wide variety of different products that can be packaged in
various ways (ie. Digital books, video, audio files, slideshows, physical
products, services, etc.) and are mid- to high-priced.
· Weight Loss
· Dog Obedience
· Spiritual Development/Horoscope
· Relationships/Dating
· Life Problems
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· Food/Cooking
These niches also give you the ability to sell multiple products to
customers, increasing your sales opportunities. Take a look around the
internet at any of these niches and you will find a nearly endless supply of
products.
Affiliate Marketing
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Google Hot Trends is the first stop. This site lists the top 100
searches on Google, the world’s most popular search engine, during the
previous 25 minutes.
Look particularly for items that are listed several different times in
different ways. From an affiliate marketing standpoint, this could be helpful.
But remember that this tracks what is trending at the moment. It’s
helpful to look at a series of days to find products with lasting power. In this
case, Kombucha tea has been one of the top searches for the past couple
of days. This probably would make an excellent product to promote through
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affiliate marketing because it’s extremely popular right now and Amazon is
almost certain to sell it. Let’s find out.
As you can see, Amazon has 362 items for sale related to Kombucha
tea. Simply select a few of these as products you would like to promote
through the Amazon Associate program, put a link to it on your page – or
mention it in your blog or article or even on your Facebook page -- and you
can start earning commissions off of the sales of this red hot product
starting right away!
Yahoo Buzz is Yahoo’s version of this list. It also shows the top
searches, but includes a little more information than Google Trends.
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Two other sites to look for hot niches are Trend Hunter and Trend
Watching. These tend to be a little more geared towards consumer trends
and offer a more global perspective, although both can be narrowed down
by country.
While Google Hot Trends, Yahoo Buzz and the others are helpful for
seeing what is hot right now, there are some other sites you can visit to find
niches with more longevity. The first is eBay Pulse. This site shows you the
products people are searching for the most:
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While knowing that Android tablets and iPads are popular you can
also dial down to see what specific products in your particular niche are the
most popular. For example, if have a website specializing in cycling, eBay
Pulse will tell you which cycling products are the hottest.
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· Peerfly.com
· ShareASale.com
· GoOffers.net
· CPALead.com
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Plus, when you create your own products, you can decide what
specific niches and sub-niches your product will target, rather than having
to rely on whatever affiliate products happen to be available in the
marketplace at that moment.
Finally, with your own products, you are free to market them in any
way you wish. If your products are of high quality, your customers who
enjoy your products will be anxiously awaiting while you create fresh, new
products.
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When you treat your customers as if they are your friends, rather than
simply people who buy your products, you can improve the effectiveness of
any marketing program. Any time you contact your customers – whether
via email, social media, in forums or anywhere else – you should try to
personalize the experience as much as possible. Share details about your
personal history and family life. When your customers develop a genuine
emotional bond with you, they have a vested interest in your success,
resulting in a long, prosperous business relationship, fortifying your online
reputation.
One effective way to do this is to follow the “4:1 Rule”. For every
email, Facebook status update or Tweet you post promoting your products,
post four others that are more personal and direct, even completely
unrelated to your business. In these four posts, you can share links to other
helpful web pages in your niche, pass along advice, tell personal stories
and post pictures and videos that reinforce your online reputation as a real
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person, rather than just a marketer who is trying to sell them something all
the time.
But when people sense that you consider them nothing more than a
customer, they will consider you nothing more than a marketer and soon
they will stop paying attention to what you have to say.
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include “What Do You Think?” with every posting that automatically links
back to your own email account or web page. This allows you to solicit your
customer’s thoughts and opinions, reinforcing their importance to you and
the success of your business.
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And when customers become fans of your content, they are more
likely to pass it on to others, increasing your chances of going viral.
Secret #2 - Look for products that can fall under the same brand
umbrella.
This makes it easier for your customers to think of you in only one
way: As a trusted friend who consistently provides solid products in their
niche interest. Think of it this way: Quaker Oats has 15 separate and
distinct breakfast cereal labels, 6 other breakfast products such as the
oatmeal, 6 snack bars, 4 food mixes, 3 sports drinks, and that doesn’t even
count their European operations, which has an entire other line of
products.
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Yet when you think of Quaker Oats, you don’t think of Captain Crunch
and Power Bars. You think of the Quaker gentlemen on the oatmeal
cylinder and of the wholesome, nutritious foods that are good for you.
To build your brand so that you can go viral, your products need to be
linked in the same way. Don’t sell both hot dogs and running shoes if you
are not Kmart. Keep your brand identity easily understandable and it will be
easier for your customers to like and trust you.
Secret #3: If you want to be a major player, you have to start acting
like one.
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The most important social media platforms are the ones that are
going to get your message out to the broadest possible audience the most
quickly. These can vary based on your niche and also can change based
on a variety of factors, including the whims of the public, introduction of
new platforms with improved technology and applications, and successful
marketing.
For example, just a few years ago, MySpace was one of the most
popular social media platforms on the internet. Today, almost nobody uses
it anymore.
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5. Pinterest – This site currently holds the title as the most popular
social preference platform. Visitors post links to things they like. If that
includes one of your links, you can go viral very easily.
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6. Google Plus – Although it stumbled coming out of the gate, the wide
variety of killer apps and features eventually are going to make this
comprehensive social networking platform the most important in the
marketplace.
And they are only the starting point. Many other important social
preference sites – including foursquare, Yelp, Flickr and Instagram, to
name a few – are of growing importance. In a few moments, we are going
to take a closer look at all of these sites and how you can use them to go
viral with your marketing.
The social media networks you create are the pathway for your viral
marketing campaign. The accounts you create on the seven platforms
listed above and the fans, followers, friends and other contacts you make
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are the point of entry for the messages that you craft. Consequently, it’s
important that you connect with these people effectively because they are
need to be passionate, enthusiastic evangelists of your brand:
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For example, if you are going into the weight loss business, it could
be a 30-day shred plan for six pack abs. If you are going into the Android
app business, it could be one month’s free access to a killer app you have
developed. If you are going into the sporting goods business, it could be an
eBook on tying fly fishing lures.
The specific content you must be something your contact s value and
will appreciate receiving from you for free. When this happens, they will feel
a trust bond with you, they will feel indebted to you, and they will be more
likely to promote future offerings from you to their social media network.
Interactive Marketing
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While you may not have the R&D resources of Apple, you can still
use the tenets of interactive marketing to help you go viral. All interactions
between your customers and you have a tone that is unique to your
company. It can be friendly, helpful, a little edgy, laid back, even funny.
Whatever personality works best for your business.
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Like the sales clerk who chatted up customers when they walked
through your front door, the virtual host of interactive marketing sites
responds in real time to your customer’s questions and needs, while
maintaining the personality that you want to project.
This kind of lead qualifying and scoring can improve the way your virtual
host interacts with the customer so that they can give each customer
precisely what they want as quickly and efficiently as possible.
keep your web pages at the top of the product searches for your niche
indefinitely.
Google and Bing, the two biggest search engines on the internet, use
“spiders” to crawl through the web and find new websites and pages. The
search engines then use their ever-changing algorithms to assess the
content of the web page or website, index it and assign it a rank. These
spiders then move on to other websites through links and the process
continues on and on forever.
For websites that promote products or services, this can mean the
difference between success and failure. The primary objective of any
business’s website is to get ranked in the number one position in their
search niche, or at the very least on the front page. If you are not on page
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1, you might as well close up shop because less than 11 percent of all
internet users ever go past page 1. In most cases, they won’t even go
down the first few results on the first page. That makes it critical for your
website to land on the first page.
Examples of on-
page SEO are including
the best keywords for your
product niche on your web
pages, especially in
strategic places such as
the title, headline, sub
heads, and first and final
paragraphs of copy.
Keyword saturation, or
repeating your keyword so
that it represents 2% to 3% of the total words on your web page, also is an
effective on-page SEO technique.
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search engines that what you have to say is important, and it consequently
will rank your page higher.
Google and Bing are the two largest search engines on the internet.
Marketers have spent years trying to figure out the best ways to outsmart
these search engines’ algorithms using non-organic methods to get their
web pages listed at the top of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) for
their niches. Aware of this, Google frequently changes its algorithm to
prevent this type of fraud.
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which users have the largest groups of followers and friends and who are
considered to be experts in their fields, assigning even more influence to
their recommendations.
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Facebook Marketing
Because of their immense popularity, social media sites also are now
the target of online advertisers. Since the purpose of advertising is to
promote products in places where they will reach maximum exposure,
Facebook is of primary importance to advertisers.
To identify people who are interested in the types of products you are
promoting, look for groups or forums on Facebook that are related to your
niche. If you sell time shares, for example, search for groups related to
“vacation travel” or “leisure”. Once you locate them, you can join these
groups for free and begin interacting with other members.
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You also can start your own groups or forums and invite the members
of the other groups to join yours so you can have more control over the
content and its distribution.
Similarly, you can create fan pages for topics related to your niche.
Then, when people who are interested in your niche search the social
media sites, they will find and join your fan pages, giving you an opportunity
to develop relationships with a whole new group of potential customers.
Forward links to articles that you found interesting and that are
related to your niche, or even those that aren’t. Retweet interesting tweets,
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not just those that have commercial motivations. Use your postings to
encourage conversations and engage other users in discussions.
Facebook ads are one of the best marketing tools on the internet
today, period. This is because Facebook is one of the most popular sites
on the planet and because it is easy to integrate your Facebook page with
other applications, such as WordPress, Twitter, LinkedIn and many, many
other apps. Facebook ads are also extremely easy to target at specific
types of users. They also are much less expensive than other advertising
methods.
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Plus, creating Facebook ads is really simple and you can have an
effective ad up and promoting your social presence in just a few moments.
The place to start is by clicking on the “Promote with an ad” button on the
right side of your Facebook Fan Page:
Clicking on this button will bring you to a screen where you can
design your add.
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By populating this boxes you can create the text for your ad, include
any pictures you want to use, design how it will look and decide where and
how frequently it will be posted.
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The Destination button is where you set where people who click on
your ad will go. It can be a Facebook page, a website or anywhere. The
default is your Fan Page. Keep this as it is for now.
In the Destination Tab, you decide where on the page visitors will
land when they click your ad: On the wall, on the info page, on the photos
page, etc.
The Title option lets you select a title for your ad. This will
automatically be the name of your Fan Page. If you are writing a different
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The Body section is the most important. This is where you write the
content of your ad. It should be brief, snappy and to the point, but also clear
as to what benefits your Fan Page has to offer and a clear Call to Action as
to what you want visitors to do, in this case visit your Fan Page. You can
give special offers, explain services, qualities of your product or whatever
you want. Just make sure your CTA is clear.
The Image tab lets you upload a photo to use with your ad. Make
sure it is relevant to what you are selling and upbeat and positive. The
image is small, only 110x80, so don’t try to cram too much into it. The
image should be like a one-image synopsis of what you are promoting.
Ads that contain images of people are more effective than those
without. Don’t use slick, professionally produced photos because this will
turn viewers off. Try to use real people, not models in your ad pictures.
The Preview box allows you to see what your ad will look like when it
is displayed. As you fill in the boxes, the ad changes.
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When you click on the “Continue” button, a new drop down menu
appears. This is called “Targeting” and is how you determine where our ad
will go. Targeting is the most effective way to reach exactly those people
you want to reach.
Facebook ads are extremely flexible, and the site makes it very
simple to target different subsets as part of your ad campaign. You can go
after a huge number of people or only a select group of people, depending
on what you are trying to accomplish.
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The first thing you select is Location. For local businesses, you will
want to target a very specific locale. For larger companies, you may want to
make your ad appear nationally or even globally. You can choose by
country, state, city or zip code.In the second tab, you determine the
Demographics you want to target. This includes age group and sex. What
you choose depends on the type of niche you are promoting. The third tab
is Interests. This allows you to dial down even further into your niche
subject. The fourth tab (not shown above) is Connections on Facebook.
This gives you the option of targeting people who are fans, who are not
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fans, or both. You can also target friends of fans. Advanced Demographics
allows you to target men, women or both; married, single, engaged;
interested in men or women. Education and Work is the next final tab.
Once you have set your ad’s targets, when you click on the
“Continue” button, you will be taken to a screen where you can decide how
much you are willing to spend on your ads.
Obviously, the more money you spend, the broader your advertising
campaign can be. But you probably have a limited marketing budget. That
means you can only afford to target those people who are most likely to
buy your product.
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The first box asks you what kind of Account Currency you are using:
US dollar, Canadian dollar, Mexican peso, Euro, etc. The second box ask
for your Campaign Name. This can be anything. Just make sure it is related
to what you are selling. The next box asks what is your Budget. This is the
amount of money you plan to spend per day on your ad campaign or the
lifetime budget of the campaign. Enter any amount you want, there is no
minimum or maximum. If you choose per day, once this amount hits the
limit, Facebook will stop running the ads of the day. Next you will determine
your Schedule. The only option you are given is to run this ad every day
starting today.
The final thing you will be asked to select is your Pricing method. You
will be given two options for ad pricing:
Pay for Clicks (CPC) – You pay only when someone clicks on your ad.
Pay for Impressions (CPM) – You pay every time your ad is displayed on
somebody’s Facebook page.
You then are asked what you will bid to either display your ad or per
click. Facebook gives you a suggested bid as well as a range. The
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minimum bid is $.01/ad. Usually, the suggested bid is the most effective
and you should try this first.
Once you have finished setting up your budget, you can review the
ad to see what it will look like. If you approve, simply push the “Place
Order” button. Facebook will ask you how you plan to pay for the ads and
you enter your credit card or other financial information here.
One of the best features of Facebook Ads is its reporting. When you
use the Facebook ad service, you will be given access to information about
your ads performance.
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The report will show you the impressions and clicks over a period of
time, as well as what your budget was and if you changed your bid.
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Twitter Marketing
If Facebook is like a fan club for your business, then Twitter is like a
tailgate party with over 200 million guests. It has an incredible amount of
potential for businesses to reach out and find their target market using
simple search tools in order to go viral.
Twitter’s greatest appeal is its brevity. You only have 140 characters
to work with, so you have no choice but to be direct and to the point. As a
result, users can quickly scroll through hundreds of Tweets in only a few
minutes. Like Facebook, most people use Twitter to keep up with friends,
family and even people they don’t actually know but would like to know,
such as their favorite movie stars, politicians and sports figures.
Although you are limited to 140 characters, Twitter lets you post
comments, as well as links to other websites, pictures, videos slideshows,
and other media, making it a fast and efficient way to get your products and
services in front of a lot of people. It instantly links users to a large number
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of people -- both who they know and who they don’t know – making it one
of the most immediate and tangible forms of communication ever created.
To get twice the value from your work, make sure you link your
Twitter to your Facebook and vice-versa. Then each time you post on one
site, it automatically posts on the other. It’s easy to do; just follow the
instructions on either site. Also, remember to promote your Twitter feed in
all the same places you promote
your Facebook page.
Then go to their profile and see who they are following and who is
following them. You can follow all of these people if you want, but a better
way would be to look for people you either know or who are friends of
friends and follow them. Or you can follow only those people who have the
most followers themselves.
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Whenever you follow somebody, they get a notification that you are
following them. On Twitter, people will almost always follow you back.
When they do, your list of Twitter followers becomes filled with people who
already are devoted to your product niche.
Then go to the
profiles of people who
have recently tweeted in
this niche and look at their
list of followers. If they
have a lot of followers,
follow those people. In
most cases, they will
automatically follow you
back. When they do,
every time you tweet
something, they will
receive it and there is the possibility they will retweet it so that their
followers will see it as well.
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Next go through their list of followers and look for those people with
the highest number of followers. These are the people you want to follow to
build your marketing program because they offer a point of contact to the
most people.
Finally, Twitter will let you know what topics are trending at any given
moment, and it’s a good idea to pay attention to them so that you can see
what people are tweeting about right now. If your niche subject is trending,
it is a great time to start getting your message out because more people
will see it.
Retweeting Strategies
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“ ‘What is harder than rock, or softer than water Yet soft water
hollows out hard rock. Persevere.’ -- Ovid #waterskiing”
Once you have a list of followers, you can continue to build your list of
Twitter followers quickly by using following these simple techniques:
Make it easy for people to find you on Twitter – Always include a link to
your Twitter profile on all your other social media sites, on your blogs, any
articles you write, on your web page and anywhere else you can.
Follow your followers – It won’t take long for people to start to find your
Twitter page and follow you. When they do, make sure you follow the back.
This helps build a bond between you and it also lets you see what they are
Tweeting.
Always respond to people who send you Tweets – Twitter will notify you
anytime your Twitter name – called your “handle” -- is mentioned anywhere
on Twitter, even if it was not directed at you. Always follow up with the
sender.
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Entertain and inform – Engage your followers one-on-one and find ways
build relationships with them. People usually scroll through dozens of
Tweets until they find something they like. When you entertain and inform,
your followers will look forward to your Tweets, so they will stop to take the
time to read them.
Retweet Tweets from your followers – Twitter lets you forward anyone’s
Tweet with the click of a single button. When your followers Tweet
something relevant, retweet it. Also, when you find something interesting,
share it with your followers.
Participate in group discussions – You can look for Tweets about topics
that interest you by doing a search using a hash tag. For example, if your
business is fine wines, you can find every Tweet in which that niche was
tagged by searching #WineTasting.
Say what you think, not just what you are doing – Facebook users like
to see what their Friends are doing. But people on Twitter usually prefer to
know what people are actually thinking.
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You may have heard about Google Plus and how its enhanced
features make it the best marketing tool for business, but what you
probably haven’t heard is that Google Plus is quickly becoming the only
tool your business needs to create lasting, influential presence online.
That’s because Google Plus takes the best features of the internet’s
most successful sites – including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even
YouTube – and makes them work better, faster and more efficiently. And
Google Plus gives you all of these enhanced features under one roof: Your
Google Plus brand page.
Here’s how to create your Google Plus account for your business:
Once you are signed in to your Google account, you can get started
by accessing the ‘create page’ wizard in one of two ways. You can visit the
Google Plus business page and click on “Create a Google+ Page” link.
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Alternatively, if you have personal profile on Google Plus, you can click on
the ‘Page’ icon on your Google+ dashboard that is displayed on the left of
your Google+ profile and then choose the ‘create page’ link from the next
screen.
An easy to use interactive wizard will now guide you through the
steps of creating your page similar to the wizard for creating a Facebook
business page.
In the first step after you click on ‘Create a Page’, you will be asked to
choose the most appropriate classification for your page. The following
options are available:
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· Product or Brand
· Other
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Google Plus is affiliated with the Picasa photo website, so if you have
images of your business there you can simply drag and drop it onto the
setup page. Or you can choose an image from your computer.
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The image you choose will be used as the icon for your Google Plus
page whenever people view your site. It also will be attached to any
postings you post, so make sure you use an image that well represents
your busines but is not so detailed so that people can’t make it out when it
is used as a thumbnail image.
Google Plus will ask you if you want to share your page with anybody
in your Circles (more on those in a moment). If you are creating a new
page from your personal Google+ page, these notifications will come from
you, not your business page. After you click through this screen, you will be
taken to your business’ Google Plus page. You will then be asked to start
building your business’ profile.
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At this point, you also can link your business’ Google Plus page to
your business’ Facebook Fan page, its Twitter account, it’s LinkedIn page,
and its foursquare page, among others.
Once you finish your profile, your Google plus page is technically
read to go and available to be viewed by the public. But because you
haven’t added any contacts yet or haven’t posted any content, it’s unlikely
that anybody will be able to find you yet. What you need to do first is to
start building your Circles
As your business grows, your Circles also will expand. So will your
ability to manage these groups according to your business’ specific needs.
Circles keeps your business working efficiently.
Have you ever wanted to own your own television network, one that
broadcasts programming devoted exclusively to you and your business.
Google Plus’ Hangouts tool allows you to do exactly that.
But you don’t have to wait for Google to come out with a new version
of Hangouts for you to expand the reach of your video networking. Llink
your Hangouts to your YouTube channel and you have an unlimited
number of people who can watch your video via YouTube live. Plus they
can participate by submitting texts that will appear directly on your Hangout
video feed.
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· Product launches
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want to participate in your Hangout and you are ready to go on the air live
with video streamed on your Google Plus profile.
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Most importantly, having your own video network allows you to build
brand loyalty with your customers. Instead of paying to place
advertisements in front of potential customers, you can invite your
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If you ever wonder about the popularity of text messaging, just walk
down any busy city street. Internet users have embraced text messaging as
the favored way of communicating with other users, even more so than
face-to-face conversations or telephone calls.
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directions and much more right from your portable device with everybody in
the group.
Another free feature, called Ripples, lets you see exactly who is
promoting your posts, where they are promoting them, how many people
they have in their Circles, and what other people are doing with your posts
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once they receive them, giving you an actual real-time picture of how your
business is being perceived on the web.
Armed with this critical information, you can design your promotions
and postings to follow the most profitable and popular paths.
Events is accessible from your Google Plus home page. It also lets
you keep track of upcoming events, RSVP to events right from your Google
Plus page, link to your Google Calendar, and access the Event pages of
past events.
Events lets you build events for your business, including seminars,
employee meetings, shareholders events, social events, charitable
occasions, special sales or whatever you want. You can send invitations to
all of your contacts or specific Circles, or to email addresses. Events will
keep track of their responses to you can know how many people are
planning to attend.
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The service even lets you to give your contacts permission to invite
other people to the event if you wish and you can authorize your guests to
add photos to the Event page.
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Then, before, during and after the event, you can upload photos and
videos to the Event page so you can access these photos from both your
albums page and the event page. If it is a recurring event, such as an
annual meeting or party, you can post pictures from previous events in the
new Event page. Once more than one photo is added to the page, you can
play a live slideshow of all the photos.
Another great feature is that Events allows you to share photos and
videos from the event in real time if you want. Simply go to the Event page
and turn on the Party Mode and any photos and videos you take there can
be instantly shared with everyone at the event. Currently, this feature is
only available on Android devices, but it is expected to be made more
widely available soon.
You can share the Event page, including photo albums and videos,
with people who weren’t originally invited to the event by posting it to your
profile and sharing it with any of your Circles you want.
Another useful app -- Google Plus’ free Streams – lets you keep up
with your business, your competitors and other topics of interest to you with
the click of a button. You can set up permanent, RSS-type feeds directly on
your Google Plus home page for any topic you want. Google’s gigantic
search engine will constantly scour the web for the latest articles, postings
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and links related to your topic and post them on directly on your page in
real time.
Sparks is another free tool provided by Google Plus that lets you
instantly recommend interesting content you find to your Circles. Plus it
provides you with a constant stream of content that people within your
network recommend. And it all appears directly on your Google Plus home
page in real time.
Google Plus also lets you connect your Google AdWords account to
your Google Plus account. This lets you show how many +1s your ads
receive. In addition, people who conduct a search on Google and see your
adds on the SERPS will see which ads the people in their Circles +1ed.
You can make your Google AdWords account even more effective by
linking it to your Google Plus page so that social signals of your Circles can
be included in search results. It is another example of how word of mouth
has been transformed in the 21st Century into social signals. We all make
buying decisions based on the advice of our family and friends. Linking
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AdWords with your Google Plus account just codifies this for the internet
age.
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Nearly every modern smart phone, digital camera, even desktop PCs
come with cameras built into them nowadays. Most shoot high definition
video as well, making it easy to produce engaging, high-quality video you
can use to promote your business.
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Use a script. The script should be set up so that there is one line for
each slide. The lines should be very short, usually not more than ten words,
which means you will have to be very economical with your writing. And
obviously, the line should be relevant to what is displayed on the screen.
Each slide will be on the screen only for about 3 seconds, no more
than 5, except for the last slide which will stay onscreen until it fades out.
That means for a 2 minute video, you are going to need about 25 to 35
lines of text.
Once you have created a video using one of these techniques, try
creating a second and third using the other two techniques. This will triple
your exposure and give you experience with different types of video
production. With internet marketing relying more heavily on videos, this
experience is going to be key to going viral.
How-to videos that are part of a series are more popular than those
that stand alone, so if you have a 10 minute video explaining how to
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change the air filter on your home furnace, for example, you would get
more visitors if you broke it into three 3:33 minute videos.
Among the most popular are those featuring babies and young
children doing and saying funny things, people lip-syncing and anything
having to do with cute animals. On YouTube, weird is revered. If it’s
appropriate for your business, come up with a video that is wacky yet
fascinating. If you hit the right tone, it can offer your best hope of going
viral.
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Because videos are the format of choice for most internet users, your
odds of going viral are improved if you focus on creating a viral video. Here
are seven shortcuts you can use to improve your chances of success:
1. The more videos, the better – Basically, the more videos you
produce, the greater your chances that one of them will go viral. It’s
sort of like playing lottery. The more tickets you buy, the better your
chances of winning.
2. Make videos that are funny – People will watch and share videos
they find entertaining. Making people laugh is the easiest way to
entertain them. Hence, funny videos are often the ones that goes
viral most frequently.
3. Target your fan base – The internet’s ability to find specific micro-
topics of interest quickly means that there are a lot of fans out there
for whatever you are selling. If you give them content that feeds their
fanaticism, they are going to be more likely to pass it along to their
contacts.
4. Parody and satire sell – One of the most basic comic tools is to
make fun of something that takes itself too seriously. You can
connect with audience and entertain them using parody and satire.
Just remember to always keep it tasteful.
7. Meme’s the word – Memes are quirky internet crazes that spread
like wildfire over the web. By being aware of what’s hot – Honey
Badger and McKayla Is Not Impressed are two recent examples –
and incorporating it into what you are trying to promote, you can
catch ride on a rocket of popularity.
The whole point of creating videos and posting them on popular video
sharing sites is to create additional backlinks to your website, so don’t
forget to post a link to your site underneath your video. You would be
surprised how many people forget this step!
Videos promoting your products are one of the best ways to improve
your site ranking on Google and other search engines, and the search
engine algorithms will continue to give more weight to video in the coming
years. It’s a good idea to embrace it now because it will be an important
part of all future marketing programs.
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While YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are the most important sites to
focus on for viral marketing, they are not the only sites. Because the
popularity of sites waxes and wanes faster than the phases of the moon,
what is hot today may not be popular in a few weeks, so it is important to
pay attention to online popularity trends. Although it may seem unlikely
right now, any of these sites may eventually take center stage.
The internet is a fickle place and the fortunes of websites rise and fall.
For example, MySpace just a few years ago was the most popular social
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networking site on the planet. Today it has few visitors and is owned by
Justin Timberlake.
However, when you’re hot, you’re hot. And one of the hottest
websites right now is Pinterest. It’s what is known as a social bookmarking
site, or a place where users can create pages where they can post links to
articles, web pages and other content that are of interest to them that they
would like to share with others.
With Pinterest, users can “pin” links that interest them so that visitors
can gain instant access to recommendations and referrals. Users can use
preprogrammed page templates or design their own pages so that they can
look any way they want.
With more than 54 million unique visitors per month, Yelp is one ofhe
most popular social review sites on the web. Users can post reviews about
anything, from restaurants to dog parks to shopping malls. They also can
search for certain kinds of businesses with defined geographic area. If you
want to find dog walkers in Helena, Montana, for example, Yelp can offer
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you your options, along with customer reviews, maps, photos, hours of
operation and other information.
Yelp allows
businesses to post
advertisements and to be
designated as “featured
businesses”. But
because of the growing
popularity of the site and
others like it, most
businesses spend more
time playing defense
than offense: Bad reviews on the site can be damaging to your business.
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Digg is one of the most popular of the “social news” sites that have
developed in recent years. Users are able to post articles and links about
things that of are interest to them. Other users can then like or dislike the
articles. Those that are the most popular are pushed to the top of the Digg
feed and those that are not fall to the bottom.
Flickr and Instagram are two of the most popular of the photo sharing
sites. Both allow users to upload photos or photo albums to the home
pages, where they can be viewed by family and friends, or even the public.
Many businesses are using these sites to promote their products and
services. They can be an effective way to provide access to your
company’s catalogue or build your reputation online.
Skype provides video telephone and conferencing services for its 521
million users. It’s free to download and Skype-to-Skype calls also are free.
It is a great way to conduct business meetings and conferences without
everybody having to travel to a single location, and its video ability make it
easy to give presentations. You can even load Power Point presentations
onto it and include a voiceover.
Now, the rest is up to you to utilize these tools to their fullest potential
and to get your content to go viral.