Quick lockdown your computers and pull out your internet connection…Ok so its not that kind of virus but today we are going to be looking at the subject of “What is Viral Marketing”

Viral Marketing is named after the way it behaves. The idea behind viral marketing is to create a message that engages with the target audience and naturaly spreads from person to person in a contageous fashion.

One of the most common quoted example I have seen online about viral marketing is about Microsofts use of putting a link to hotmail in every email sent from their hotmail service. This allowed Microsoft to grow their email service very quickly as people became aware of the service from every message their friends sent them. This number of free service advertisments just kept growing as hotmails user base increased.
Things have come a long way since Microsoft introduced their simple viral campaign into their emails. We now have some great new platforms such as the Social Networking websites FaceBook, MySpace and online video websites such as YouTube and Metacafe. Which has resulted in an explosion of some very clever viral marketing campaigns.

These new platforms have opened up a whole new range of ways of reaching your potential customers which i will go into more detail in future articles.