by Matt Genna

If you own a computer or smart phone, chances are you’re familiar with websites like YouTube, Vimeo, etc., as they are popular ways for people to view various types of online media. On these websites anyone can login and upload endless types of content, whether it’s a video cut of your home videos or pictures in which you could create a slideshow to show everyone on the web. Regardless of whatever you choose to put on, it’s almost guaranteed that a wide array of people from all parts of the world will be able to access it. With that being said, as a marketer, you can only imagine the possibilities of the endless types of markets you can tap into.

Marketers recognized this and it is the reason why they use these social media outlets to advertise various products and services. However, most people today are also savvy to the ways in which marketers use social media to advertise; this is why marketers have to come up with creative techniques to catch a random person’s eye on the web. People don’t like to be bothered when browsing the web, which is why there are things like pop-up blockers, spam filters and so on, so it’s quite the challenge for marketers to actually get their advertising efforts across to the masses through any form of internet marketing. One of the routes many marketers choose to go in this case, however, is viral marketing.

Viral marketing often uses pre-existing social networks to create a “buzz” about a company or product through a self-replicating viral process. In other words, viral marketing can take advantage of an already established social network, creating hype about a company or product through the mouths of the people in the social network. In this case, marketers use video clips as a way to create the buzz around the people. Most of the time when referring to these types of videos, marketers will create humorous video content, seeing as most people seem to enjoy watching funny videos when browsing these types of websites.

The trick is to provide the user watching the video with something they enjoy watching enough to spread the word to their friends and family while still advertising whatever it is they need. But, not only does the viral campaign need to be well put together to work, but so does the product or service as well. You can only advertise something so far before it will have to hold up to the hype created around it. Let’s take the movie trailer for “Snakes on a Plane” for example – as soon as this trailer hit the web and found its way onto YouTube, there was an immediate reaction from the people. When searching the name on YouTube after being released, you could easily find trailers that people made mocking the film, parodies of it, etc. – everyone was talking about this film. And although there was so much hype surrounded around the film, the film itself ended up showing a mediocre box office.

So, if you are considering marketing through social media, you should also consider if the product or service in which you are advertising is right for this type of marketing technique. It’s all about the timing for any type of marketing, so be sure to take that into consideration also when advertising. But when advertising through viral social media, know that it works when executed properly.