How to Make a Viral Article

How does one make an article viral?

If you've been following my blog, you're probably starting to get the idea of what to do to make a viral article, as the rules of viral marketing can easily be applied to many applications.

First of all the article needs to have quality content that a reader will find useful and want to read. This requires a good attention grabbing headline, a good lead in paragraph to generate interest, and relevant content.

Second, you add in the viral marketing aspect which means creating incentive to pass the article on, publish it, refer it to friends, or create buzz through word of mouth. There are a few ways to do this as listed below.

• Include content that will make people feel good about passing it on. This could be an inspiring story, information about a just cause, or something humorous.
• Offer a monetary cash reward for publishing or passing on the article. There are many ezine owners, and webmasters looking for content to publish to their subscribers and visitors. If you add an affiliate link in the resource box and let them know that they can publish the article and change the affiliate link to their own, then any sales made through that published link will credit them with the commission. They will be happy to choose your article over others without brandable affiliate links in them. This works particularly well to your benefit if the affiliate link is for your own affiliate program, or a 2-tier affiliate program that would mean if they sign up through your link, you get a 2nd tier commission when they make commissions through their own link. Take note of this, and when possible use 2 tier affiliate programs for your links.
• Offer something of benefit. Put in your resource box that if they visit your site, they can get a free ebook, free report, a newsletter, free membership to your site, product discount, or some other incentive that would be of value to them. Not only does this encourage people to visit your site from the article, but it also means webmasters and ezine publishers will be encouraged to use your article, because they'll feel it is of value to their readers and visitors.
• Mention in the resource box that, "This article is free for reproduction but must be reproduced in its entirety & this copyright statement as well as all links must be included." This will make it so that anyone who reads the article wherever it is published may decide to republish it, and then others who read those publications may also decide to republish and so on and so on. This can create a true viral marketing effect.
• Add a tell-a-friend or send-a-friend script to the end of the article and ask readers to pass it on if they found it of value and think their friends may find it of value too. Most article directories will not allow this in their submission forms, but some of them will add it automatically when they publish the articles.

Third thing to do, is to take action and actually publish your article. No one will ever spread your viral article if they never have a chance to see it. So make sure to publish it when you complete it.

I'll go into more detail in my next post on how to publish your viral articles easily to hundreds and even thousands of websites will very little effort, and I'll even give you a free software tool to automate the whole process. So stay tuned to the Viral Marketing Buzz Blog.

Peace & Prosperity,

Jambhala Rinpo
ViralMarketingBuzz.com
"This article is free for reproduction but must be reproduced in its entirety & this copyright statement as well as all links must be included."