Basically, it just means notable, interesting. There is a story around it. You must have the juicy tidbits that stars like Britney Spears and Madonna are known for. If you cannot get the people to be convinced that it is something new, juicy and revolutionary, you cannot expect to pass the viral marketing standard. If you really want it to sell like pancakes, it must be something substantial and extremely intriguing enough for the user.
Key Two: It must be useful to the person you are sending it to.
Otherwise, it is like some chain letters that you get. It is like, “Why do this person send it to me? Delete. It is gone.” If it is useful to the person that gets it and the person that read it initially forwards it to others who might find it useful too, it continues a self-perpetuating cycle.
If you do not establish this, the first man or woman that gets it will treat it as junk and press the delete button. So, it does not go on. But if they think it is useful and they know you personally, chances are you have some similar interests. It might be interesting to you and it gets forwarded around and the message just spreads.
Key Three: It must be easy to pass on.
This is actually the most important key of the three, but it will not work without the first two. You have to have all three, but this is the thing that really makes it viral. A “Tell a Friend” script might be another good example.
When you visit a website and you think it is really cool, often, they will have a thing where it says tell a friend, and you can type in the e-mail addresses of two or three of your friends. They get a link to the site saying, “Hey, so and so, with your name, sent your link to the site. Come and check it out.” Those are examples of tools that make your material easy to pass around.
There are various viral examples. If you can get that kind of viral movement which is synonymous to having multiple branching out levels as in an old Pert commercial, it does not really take very long to spread your message, but you have to have the three keys that we just talked about.
Another example is reports. You see a lot of people in internet doing this. They will create a report that has great content. Inside the report you can have links to backend products, your affiliate links, and you can brand it like with your brand saying sometimes if it is your report, you brand it however you want. This is already instant viral marketing for you. Tools such as viralpdf.com help you create those reports.
