In this day and age it is becoming increasingly more difficult to go viral. This is especially true for companies to overcome the feel of spam which means creativity is your only weapon. Comedy is usually the best weapon, and creating the content isn’t the easiest of tasks. Old Spice obviously hit the nail on the head with their commercials and ran with it just long enough to keep the brand in the minds of millions. They’ll most likely never be able to duplicate that amount of buzz again, but take a look at just how much traffic they got blasted with;
For most of the companies out there trying to get a piece of the pie, they’ll most likely not have the option to just launch viral right from their website. Getting that extra push will require the help of the social web, and while getting hot on Digg just isn’t as easy these days, there are other places to turn your attention to. Keep in mind you cannot just jump on these sites and expect to go viral, it could happen but most likely not. Building your social fan base is key, and for this we recommend building up a couple months of fans and social participation on these sites.
Launchpad 1) BuzzFeed.com
Buzz Feed is not only a great site to read on a daily basis, it is also a great place to go viral. I’m an active user here just for the purposes of entertainment, but if you got some hilarious or strange link bait, you stand a great chance of getting attention. Keep in mind on a site like this there are thousands of other content pieces in the queue, so you’re link bait is going to need to be grade A awesome. Have your social media manager build up a strong account here beforehand and put forth a positive image of your brand. From the viral content we’ve launched here, you’ll see a lot of Facebook shares and ReTweets from the users, as well the thousands of sites that aggregate the content.
Launchpad 2) Reddit.com
Reddit is my favorite website, I’m personally a 4 year user and couldn’t live without it! Reddit is not a site you can game very easily, nor do I recommend trying to at all. Their user base is above and beyond the childish Digg user, and they can smell a spam scam from a mile away. The only advice I can give you is to have awesome content and wait for a Reddit user to submit it on their own merit. If you’re team has a good account, make sure you stick to the sub-reddits which will greatly increase your popularity. If you can get content to go hot here, you’re in for a large amount of traffic!
Launchpad 3) Huffington Post
All you right wingers out there might be scoffing at this recommendation, but the left just does entertainment news so much better. This is mainly a news site, but it does have a very popular entertainment section where you’ll find write-ups on the latest viral content going around. This site is also user powered which means you can sign up, write your own posts and participate socially throughout the site. If your link bait is hot hot hot, then you’re chances to getting it to go viral from this site is very good. This is a place you’re going to want to build an account up for as well, don’t bother just signing up for the sole purpose of submitting one piece of content. Social media is about building relationships, so keep that in mind before you try and become a one post wonder.
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This is the section where I plead, beg and ask for our readers to suggest other sites that they are fond of. There are dozens of great sites to launch your link bait from so lets here em! If your company is struggling with its own viral marketing efforts then this is where I’ll offer our link baiting services.
