Viral Marketing & Linkbait Basic: Part IV

We covered the first tier of the ‘Linkerati’, the people who are most likely to help you to gain exposure using viral marketing tactics. While these three will always be your number one priority in getting your name and content out onto the great expanse of the World Wide Web, there are three others that can prove beneficial, as long as you provide content that will be directly related to their interests. Unfortunately, the two out of three can be difficult to expand to, but knowing of their existence will be the first step into catching their attention, and provide a secondary resource to linkbaiters.

Forum Users

In the past viral marketers have ignored forums as a means of spreading content, because they were so difficult to attract using search engines. But Google updated their tools last week, and one of the best upgrades for linkbaiters was the ability to more easily search out forum and discussion topics that are hidden in the wide net of content. This narrows searches down, and make it easier for viral marketing to be incorporated easing posters.

When using forums and discussion websites you will be relying totally on traffic, which will be followed through links. The chances of this content making it’s way to social networking sites such as Digg are slim, but they are likely to be posted as direct media marketing on sites like Facebook, Myspace, and even Livejournal, at least if you are hosting it on an easily linked website, such as YouTube.

What makes this an even better resource is the fact that forum posts tend to live on for a great deal of time, and are constantly being pushed up in queue when the topic is popular. While some will eventually be archived, the amount of attention a forum post will get in the meantime is potentially huge. Having forum posters interested in your content is a great way of gaining a quick boost of exposure.

Researchers

Specially, researching authors and writers. Different than journalists, writers, researchers, professionals and students who are looking to write a paper or article about a topic will often use websites as a means of gaining information. That will gain those websites, as well as the content creators, a nod in any acknowledgments and footnotes provided with the study.

This is not, admittedly, a means of gaining a great deal of traffic or exposure, but it is still a way of getting your name out there. It will also offer your content credibility, which in turn may bring more people looking for information on any given topic. But this will only work if the content you are proving is well researched, informative, and well written. It goes back to taking pride in your work, rather than creating articles purely or content purely for linkbaiting.

Other Media Figures

How often have you seen a viral video on television? Comedy shows, news networks, and other sources will often post popular viral content on their own shows, reaching a huge audience without having any actual connection to the Internet. Because the net of viewers is so wide, and because quite often one media source will pick stories up from others to show at their own, it is an exciting way to get your name or content out into the world.

Unfortunately, doing this is not easy. You have to have a high ranking in popularity, in most cases, and already have managed to drive traffic, network sharing, and other sources to a peak. Because of this, it is not a rational means of linkbaiting or viral marketing, but it is still something to aspire to. If you are lucky enough to find your content on television, mentioned on the radio, or expanded by any offline contributing source, take full advantage of it.

These three members of the ‘Linkerati’ are the least likely to prove results without a great deal of hard work. But if you manage to slide in with any of them, you can use the benefits to boost credibility, reach a new target audience, and drive traffic to higher peaks than you could have imagined. This is what viral marketing, and linkbaiting, are all about, so be sure to use these marketing elite to their full advantage.

Just be sure that your content is made with each member in mind, somewhere. Use the same content to attract the same source, if at all possible, such as social networking and bloggers, journalists and researchers, offline source and forums, ect.