“Going viral” cannot be a strategy. The following quotes from marketing and product development experts can help anyone refine their digital marketing efforts.
This is viral:
“People don’t usually pick their product based on what they think will grow virally- so as a result, you have to analyze your own product to see what makes sense.”–Andrew Chen
Viral Branding: Do something REALLY cool and people will tell all their friends.–Andrew Chen
Viral Action: Do something that’s REALLY easy to spread to other people.–Andrew Chen
“What you are really aiming for is “reach”–you need to think like a media buyer, and not like a viral video producer. I recently saw a keynote from Michael Parker, the VP of Corporate Marketing for Symantec, where he discussed how they were able to make some of their recent videos go viral with their target market (IT professionals). The answer? They bought a lot of ads to promote their videos. That’s it. The title of his keynote, btw, was “The Myth of Viral Video,” which I think sums up his point pretty succinctly.”–Tom Webster, Why You Aren’t Going Viral