Do you want people
to share your viral content? Here are tips to make it go faster and farther.
1> The "fill out a form" trade-off
2> Use the power of networks
3> Unhide the good stuff
4> Check it out: Slideshare
1> The "fill
out a form" trade-off
So you’ve created a
great white paper or report that you want all your new prospects to see. Do you just let them download it, or do you
make them fill out a form first? It can
go either way.
Here’s the trade-off: Leads vs. Velocity. If readers have to fill out a form, you get
their contact info for sales purposes. But … it’s a lot harder for people to share the document, and many
people won’t fill out the form. So
you’ll get a lot fewer leads.
Either choice is OK,
but I recommend skipping the form. A
truly live lead is going to contact you if they like what the paper says. A bad lead will just put fake info in the
form. I’d rather get 10x more people
seeing the paper, which gets 10x more leads, blog posts, and referrals — than
a list of mildly interested names that reluctantly filled out a form.
The Lesson: Don’t kill the viral power of a free download
with a low-return login process.
2> Use the power
of networks
Here’s how to get
100x more people seeing your free downloadable content. Use sharing tools built into sites like
YouTube. When you put a video on your own
site, it’s stuck there. When you put the
same video on YouTube, it is surrounded by text and links encouraging viewers
to share it. Viewers can add it to
favorites, send it to their contact lists, add it to blogs … and a dozen
other kinds of sharing you’ll never get from your own site. Think of these social network sites as
distribution services, with pre-existing technology to promote you to
pre-existing networks of interested leads.
The Lesson: You made the video to be seen, so put it where
it’s going to be seen.
3> Unhide the good stuff
I recently met an
eBay seller who sells cell phones (I lost your name … email me!). They struggle with a lot of returns and
complaints from people who just don’t know how to use the phones. So they put little demo videos on their site
in the tech support section.
Advice: Put those
videos on YouTube, MySpace, and anywhere else you can. Turn them from a tech support expense to
fantastic viral advertising. People love
to share videos, and helpful how-to content is very popular. Surround the video with links to your site
and products. You’ll get far more
advertising, for free, than you could ever pay for. And in a category with generic products that
you can buy anywhere, you’ll stand out as a highly helpful, service-oriented
company.
The Lesson: Turn your
tech support costs into a viral marketing asset.
4> Check it out: SlideShare
SlideShare is like YouTube
for PowerPoint. Upload a presentation,
share it, forward it. For us dorky executives
who aren’t cool enough to be #1 on YouTube or MySpace — this is the place for
us!
Download my instructional
presentation:
How to Use SlideShare for Shameless Word of Mouth Self-Promotion
http://www.slideshare.net/sernovitz
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