Viral marketing spreads your powerful message like a virus to your ideal customers who drive more and more business to you as they share your information with their network through email and social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and many others. Viral marketing allows for the most cost effective means of creating brand identity, establishing trust and credibility, acquiring loyal leads and customers and accessing an ongoing source of referrals. Today's internet reaches a global market easily, affordably and instantly.

Explosive growth of social networking, blog marketing, video marketing, podcast marketing and RSS are strategies that will put you far ahead of your competition and allow you to easily and almost effortlessly connect with your market. Viral marketing tools powered by CMS are an ideal solution for gaining an immediate and powerful access to almost every market, even on a limited budget.

This article will help you to understand:

• Essential components of viral marketing
• The importance of CMS management systems for viral marketing
• Effective viral marketing techniques
• Viral marketing solutions powered by CMS that provide flexible options for integration into an existing website or serve as a stand alone website platform

Components of viral marketing

Before you can even consider distributing your content through viral marketing techniques, it is essential that you develop powerful content that meets a bold identified need for your ideal customers. Specific components to include are:

• Information about you and/or your company that establishes credibility
• Contact information
• Testimonials that may be written or in the form of video or audio
• Video
• Audio / podcasts
• Articles
• Pressroom items
• Images (optional depending on goals)
• Links to your social networks
• Links to your website and blog
• RSS feeds

Use of CMS management systems for viral marketing CMS management systems allow for the organization, storage and easy management of content that can be used for a variety of purposes. When the goal of CMS is viral marketing, the CMS management systems will be used to strategically share content for such purposes as branding, promotion, education, communication, entertainment, affiliate marketing, lead generation and sales. Through CMS management systems, the administrator is provided with a password protected administration area where he or she can upload and manage their content and create immediate changes on the front end which is viewed by website visitors. Some CMS are very limited whereas others include the ability to group content by categories, build opt-in lists, sell products, optimize with keywords for search engines, choose what does and does not display for visitors and choose options to include sharing tools for items posted. Good CMS management systems for viral marketing purposes offer the ability to upload and manage a variety of important viral marketing content as defined above.

Effective viral marketing techniques

• Social networks: a good beginning is to set up accounts in Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Linked-in, Friendfeed and YouTube®. Link these together wherever possible, create a powerful profile, join groups, find friends and build fans and followers.
• RSS feeds: create feeds for your blog, video, podcasts and any other relevant area of content that you update on a regular basis and want to present to your market.
• Email marketing: this includes targeted mailings sent to your opt-in list with information, education, featured cases, special offers and testimonials.
• Blog marketing: make regular posts that include relevant tips and articles, video, audio and news items. Make your blog interactive by allowing moderated comments, ratings/reviews, viral sharing tools, surveys and polls.
• Video marketing: add your video to video sharing sites and add links or embed code where possible.
• Podcasts marketing: add your podcasts to audio sharing sites and add links or embed code where possible.

Viral marketing solutions powered by CMS that provide flexible options

When a viral marketing tool is powered by CMS, it provides a central place where all important viral marketing components can be easily accessed. You do not have to pay for costly website or blog development to incorporate galleries for your video, audio/podcasts, articles or pressroom and your visitor has easy access to your social networks, RSS feeds, opt-in email, contact information and all the important information about your business or organization. The best viral marketing solutions powered by CMS provide flexible options that allow you to easily integrate links from the tool in your website, blog, email and social networks. When added to your main navigation on your website for instance, these links might include video gallery, podcasts, pressroom and/or articles. Without costly website development, you have significantly enhanced the content available from your site and the value for your market. Clicking on any of the added links will seamlessly take the visitor to your viral marketing tool in a new window. Once in the tool, they have full access to all of your content where they can bookmark, share content, join your list and even buy your products. When the visitor leaves the tool, he or she is back on your website or blog.

Viral marketing tools powered by CMS are a cost effective and savvy marketing solution for small businesses, entrepreneurs, consultants, speakers, professionals, organizations, schools and corporations. The applications for viral marketing powered by CMS are only limited by one's imagination and levels the playing field for all participants.

Look for VirOBiz Viral Marketing Tool coming soon from WebPuzzleMaster