Wednesday, October 29, 2008

a sure-fire way to "go viral"

Marshall Kirkpatrick has a great post over at Read/Write Web about keeping momentum. In that post, he describes one technique - make yourself a public case study.

". . . .other vendors follow up announcements by publicly using their own tools to deliver high value resources that demonstrate how valuable those tools can be. This is easier said than done but it's the best way to follow up momentum from an announcement that we know of. Two of our favorite examples are Slideshare adviser Dave McClure's slideshows about what startups in general should know about and the graphic design tutorials made by SaaS design tool company Aviary.

These are the kinds of media items, built with the company's own tools, that get passed around to audiences far wider than just those who would be interested in the companies themselves. They demonstrate though, just how usefull the tools can be. Instead of marketing to one thousand people who might be interested in Slideshare or Aviary, these resources reach audiences of hundreds of thousands of people, of which a smaller percentage but larger absolute number of people will be interested in the company itself.

Got that? After a launch event, follow it up by using your own product or services to create a resource that "goes viral!" No problem, right? Of course this is much easier said than done and is done poorly far more often than it is done well - but nobody said any of this would be easy."

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