A Sticky And Viral Cocktail

Written by David Gikandi


Amazon.com. Napster. Ebay. Blue Mountain Arts. Hotmail. These companies made it big onrepparttar web, most with surprisingly low marketing budgets, reaching unexpected heights in short time spans. Why? Was it branding? Sure, they are all strong brands today, but that is not what made them what they are. To be fair, a variety of factors contributed to their success. But by farrepparttar 121976 most important ones were tools and strategies that were sticky and viral in nature. Nothing markets a site better, spreading it like a wild fire, than having a viral product, tools or processes. And nothing makes it more capable of generating revenues than being sticky, for people only part with their money after they are comfortable with a product, after they have seen it a few times and interacted with it somehow.

The great news is that your site can start becoming sticky and viral right away by employing a few simple tools. Before we start looking at these tools that you may add to your site, it is important to remember that this works best if you add them into all your pages, emails, and products, as much as is possible to do so. Here we go:

Email To A Friend

On every page on your site, you should make it easy for people to send that page to their friends. Did you know that most people would look at something their friends send them? The number one rule of making something viral is making it easy to spread. Make sure that each page has a clear link or icon that invitesrepparttar 121977 user to sendrepparttar 121978 page to their friend. When they click on it, they should be able to send simply by entering their name and their friend's email address - keep it simple. The only other bit of information you may want to ask them for is their friend's name for personalization purposes. To add such functionality to your site, you will need to download a free script. There are plenty to choose from. You can find one inrepparttar 121979 Webmasters Specials CGI Scripts category at www.aboutwebmasters.com.

Free tools and products that pass on

Offer a free version of your product, or something else free. Make sure that it is useful; otherwise no one will really care about it. Ensure also that it is very easy for users to pass on these free products to their friends. If you can integrate this passing on as part of product use, then you have it made because by usingrepparttar 121980 product,repparttar 121981 person will have to tell their friends about it. Something you can quickly make is a screensaver and wallpaper. Download a good product for making these (see www.download.com), get some good images and create a quality screensaver and wallpaper. You can add your site URL and description to some screens onrepparttar 121982 screensaver. Then submitrepparttar 121983 screensaver and wallpaper to popular download sites such as ZDNet.com and Download.com. Every time someone downloads and usesrepparttar 121984 screensaver, they get to know about your site.

Forums, Chat, Community and Office Tools

Provide ways through which your site visitors can add content to your site and communicate with each other. Have forums, chat, and possibly instant messaging. One way to easily add this to your site is using www.everyone.net. Offer free office tools, too, such as calendars, file sharing, to-do lists, group tools, and more. You can do so easily and for free my signing up with www.myevents.com.

Postcards

People love sending postcards. Blue Mountain Arts made history when it was acquired for over 800 million dollars, yet all it did was allow people to send electronic postcards to each other. The magic here is that if someone sends a friend a card fro your site, that friend will almost always want to pick it up, and to do so they would have to pic it up at your site! That is a great way to get new users. To start a free postcards service on your site, all you need is to buy a CGI script that will do allrepparttar 121985 work for you. It is very easy. You can find one inrepparttar 121986 Webmasters Specials CGI Scripts category at www.aboutwebmasters.com.

Shopping Choice

Amazon.com's success is in a large proportion due torepparttar 121987 amount of choice they give their users. You can buy millions of products right there. Choice is convenience, hence sticky. So how do you add a store with millions of related products to your site without taking onrepparttar 121988 expense and hassle of running such a huge undertaking? Add a free Vstore. Its easy and free and you get brand name products in a wide variety of categories all set up for you in a few minutes. See http://www.aboutwebmasters.com/specials/7.shtml for details.

Make an Impact - Make a Difference!

Written by Rick Beneteau


It was moving day, twenty some years ago. The trucks had long since pulled away from our new home and we were left in that "what a mess limbo" that you are probably all too familiar with.

We were also hungry and this was no time to hook uprepparttar stove and go rifling throughrepparttar 121975 stacked boxes to find our kitchen supplies. With no phone installed, dad and two-year old daughter decide to try outrepparttar 121976 brand new Taco Bell everyone was talking about.

The parking lot was full but with babe in arms we filtered into one ofrepparttar 121977 LONG lines of eager first-time fast-food seekers and Sara had her eyes fixed onrepparttar 121978 busy counter. As children haverepparttar 121979 uncanny ability to do, during a dead silent moment inrepparttar 121980 crowd, she screamed atrepparttar 121981 top of her little lungs, "Daddy, look at that 'wary' big brown lady!!", pointing atrepparttar 121982 counter person in charge of our line.

Look, I don't know how many shades of red a person can really turn, but I know I must have sported them all. I can still hear bothrepparttar 121983 boisterous laughter andrepparttar 121984 silent gasps of sheer shock at this innocent revelation. All I know is I felt terrible that it was MY "out ofrepparttar 121985 mouths of babes" that rocked this joint.

When we finally reachedrepparttar 121986 counter, I could only offer my most profound apology to who would be this wonderful, large Afro-American woman who said "No problem at all, I laughed too!". Phew!:-)

Well, 'Marva' and I starting chatting about her new job and other things, and I told her I owned a drycleaning company in town. Now, I admit that I still enjoy some Taco Bell fare, so I continued to visit this location on occasion for over a decade. Each time, Marva remembered my name, asked me how business was, and of course, how Sara was!!

The point of this true story is very simple. Albeit a strange and innocent way to make an impact, my two-year old tyke did just that. And, in a big way. A strong impression that lasted more than ten years. Each time I was there after that, I stood in Marva's line and whenever management wasn't looking over her shoulder, I slipped her a nice tip which she always refused to take (but I always won).

Although this particular fast food location is now gone, I will always remember Marva and that day, and I'm quite sure Marva (and many of repparttar 121987 patrons, at least those with a sense of humor) will never forget it either.

And so, we all should strive to make a profound impact on people, especially in business, on our customers. Let me explain.

The very best way we can make an impact on customers is by making sure our product or service itself makes one. Trust me, I'm not trying to be boastful here, but byrepparttar 121988 time I was finished writing my first book, The Ezine Marketing Machine, I knew in my heart that *if* I could get it to sell well, it would help an awful lot of people and make a strong impact on those folks who wanted to userepparttar 121989 best Internet promotion method available in order to make a good living online.

Gratefully, I was able to launch successfully and withrepparttar 121990 help of many dedicated resellers, turn EMM into one ofrepparttar 121991 best selling Internet marketing books ever. The evidence ofrepparttar 121992 impact that this book has made is clearly shown inrepparttar 121993 testimonials I've received (this is about 1/3 of them) which I encourage you to read: http://www.interniche.net/said.html

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