“Your website should reflect what your company is all about (Ajay Prassad)”

This is probably the most insightful web marketing advice I’ve got after hours and hours of reading articles and blogs on how to create a website. After reading, I get to realize how exciting it is to be a web developer and putting your thinking cup every time you design a site.

In web creation, you should give your visitors what they want. In fact, most people will love your site if you keep it simple and attractive. Just what Rebecca Star wrote in her article titled How to Create a Custom Web Design, “When you’re doing your creation, don’t overload it with a lot of extras. Too many items can cause the site to load slowly. People will turn away and look for something else. They get frustrated if they have to wait minutes for a site to load.”

Sounds intimidating, right? Yeah, web designing might be tough even to those good programmers. A while ago, I read an interesting article written by Phil Anderson. He enumerated the five must-have elements of a good website.

The Professional Website Design

Number One, it refers to the consistency of design and writing styles. To him, “Changing font colors and tone of writing from page to page will give weird feelings to your web users. Inconsistent stance on certain and change of tone in your writing style will definitely confuse your web users and harm the site creditability.”

Two, the user friendly navigation. “Good site navigation will assure pleasant user experience and smooth information flow from the web publisher to the users,” he wrote. That means, those web developers and graphic designers should refrain from overloading the site with graphics and should also observe few colors spaces. From what I’ve learned, a smooth navigation system should only consist of left-side menu, top corner search, major categories bar written in dark colors, service page and recent releases.

The third element has something to do with reliable web hosting. According to Wkipedia, the role of a web hosting service is responsible for the visibility of a website in the World Wide Web. There are various types of web hosting services ranging from free hosting, shared hosting, clustered, reseller and FFmeg. The five variables you should look to upon choosing a good web hosting services are- bandwidth, storage, support, upgrading and the server details.

Whatever you choose from these services, you should also take note of a good domain name. A domain name refers to the groups of letters you saw after the www on the navigational bar. Your domain name should mirror the identity of your campaign. For instance, if your niche marketing is about learning how to drive, your domain name should be short and easily retained in one’s memory such as drivinglessons.com or basicdrivinglessons.com

The fourth element is the accuracy of information. “You might not have too much time organizing your website but the info served should be accurate and up to date always. Your users are there to obtain information and it’s no good at all if you’re serving incorrect info to them.”

Lastly, the contacts and creditability. “Make sure that you placed your contacts, such as emails and phone number, are properly displayed. This is very important so that you web visitors can contact you if they feel the need to,” Anderson wrote.

Seeding Your Website

Just as much as I want to discuss the step-by-step technicalities behind web designing, it’s now time to learn how to market a website.

According to Mike James Thomas, an expert author in EzineArticles, optimizing a website has two parts. These are on-page and off-page optimization. An on-page optimization is only implemented when you are changing the title tags, header tags, meta tags and alt tags of a page while an off-page optimization is the method of promoting your website to the public eye.

Off-page optimization has various techniques. You can submit the pages in social bookmarking sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon, spinning site’s articles and post it to article directories such as EzineArticles or GoArticles, inserting significant keywords writing articles and press releases and linking your site to popular RSS feeds and video hosting sites.

Making Life Easier

Creating a website can be tough for some people who have no rooms for patience and consistency. However, you can always ask for help. You can search for web developers online. Outsourcing can sometimes be cheaper compared to doing all those buggy activities all by yourself.

If outsourcing still sounds expensive for you, join an online forum and ask if they have some suggestions to where cheap web designing can be found.

But if you think you have a keen mind on details, allow yourself to browse various website tutorial-videos in YouTube or better yet, participate in a reliable Internet Marketing Program that offers training on creating websites.

Website Marketing is tough but is not so complicated if you have prepared the proper tools and softwares to your success!

Viral email marketing defines as a viral (spread-the-word) seeding technique that allows you to use the power of email technology to proliferate your marketing campaign online. Let’s say, your business is not online. Try thinking of ways on how you can integrate the various email marketing tools to your business transactions.

In fact, making money online is easier using this technique. There’s no need to use white envelopes or spend a dime for Mr. Post Man.

Try rewinding the history. You will discover that the very first successful email campaign is the Hotmail. This was the time when Hotmail offered a free email account to anyone who wants their services.

Techniques in Viral Email Marketing

Your number one goal in email marketing is to spread the word. You need to give your customers the big reason why they are forwarding your message to their friends. You should know how to encourage them by any means. If they want comedy, send them links to many funny videos and jokes. If they seek for straight-forward information, let them know the procedures.

According to Claudia Trusty, there are four basic written scripts you can include in your email messages.

1 “Got this great coupon and thought you could use it too”

2 “Heard about this—want to go with me?”

3 “This is so cool…thought you might like it.”

4 “Great information. You might need it for your project.”

Whatever written script you will use, you must remember that your only goal is to increase readership and make sure you will use the correct script in every viral message you have created.

Before the written script, focus your attention on the Subject Line. The subject line is what the readers will read first the moment they click on their inbox and if they find it interesting and unique, they will click in it.

The “Open Me, Read Me” subject line is no longer an effective viral message and should be stopped immediately. An ideal subject line is composed of one to five words only. The shorter your subject line, the more catchy it is and when it’s catchy, the chances of clicks is high.

For instance, if your message is about introducing someone who is your marketing consultant and her name is Britney Sheers. You can write “You Must Love Britney!” in your subject line and when people read your message, they can think of “Britney Spears” or someone they can associate with the name.

Another consideration is your email content. Viral email messages can be written in various ways: sales letter, product reviews or newsletters. Whatever is the format, your email content should have an introduction, body and conclusion. Long contents will not work and will never be read. For this, you need to follow the K–I-S-S formula.

If your message is too long but is important in every angle, send it in parts. Readers will like it more if they receive messages with cliff hanger end points. Anyway, the goal of your writing emails is how well you are in circulating your viral ads (links).

Offering something can also increase the chance of getting clicked. Jeremy Long Chia Teik wrote in his article,

“It is senseless to offer ten dollars discount for every ten people recommended. This may cause privacy issues that may affect the marketer’s reputation. If such an offer really gets emailed, consequences would be drastic. We can only imagine the message will be sent like a spam, possibly overloading servers. Therefore, the best solution would be a tangible value-added offer, by which viral email marketing works effectively.”

Timing is also an important variable you need to consider in email marketing. If you have your autoresponder with you as your viral marketing software, limit the number of emails you send to your readers. Thrice a week is already enough. The chances of getting clicked depend on how powerful the quality of your message is, not the number of times you send them in their inbox.

Closing Words

The world of viral email marketing might be the easiest tool you can use in online marketing. My advice to you: Start small and never purchase any mailing list services if you think you don’t need one. As a beginner, the effectiveness of your mail campaign depends on the overall quality of your goals, the quantity will follow.

These days, viral advertising and viral marketing are used synonymously. But be definition, these two concepts articulate different things. If you will review your marketing 101 book, marketing is always the bigger of picture of advertising and advertising is only a part of marketing.

From what I understand, the role of advertising is not to sell. Selling is different. This method comes after advertising. According to Dennis Francis, a consultant and business coach for chiropractors and other professional health-care practitioners and an expert author in EzineArticles, “Advertising promotes the distinguishing features, benefits and advantages of your offer to a wide market.”

There is no money involved in advertising. As an entrepreneur, your job is to let the people understand what your product is and how can the product improve the quality of their lifestyle. You are marketing the product’s brand, instead of its prices.

This like psychology! If you are an advertiser, you are only a psychologist who listens and evaluates your clients’ needs and wants. However, if you a seller, you are playing the role of a psychiatrist. You can now prescribe medicines to your clients.

You know, when you say viral marketing, advertising is only a tool you can use to proliferate your campaign. Other marketing tools are Internet, education, print promotions, sales, direct mail and public relations.

For this, you should give a twist to your viral advertising in order to make successful sales. Poor sales mean poor advertising, right? And this is what this article is all about. I am personally telling you the most effective techniques used in viral advertising.

The Viral Advertisement Ad

According to Austin Akalanze, there are three types of viral advertisement you might use in your business campaigns. These are…

SOLO ADS- these are basically the commercials you send to your customers through newsletters or ebook. It is called solo due to the fact that it has no competing offers found on the page. The customers who read your ebook or newsletter can immediately see the ad and click it, if he is interested.

The second is CLASSIFIEDS. Have you seen various square or rectangle boxes on a newspaper? This is exactly what an online classified ad looks like. These ads are all over the net and sometimes, you are confused where to click and what to click. This is the downfall of classified ads. There are many competitors along the way and you need to meticulously tweak your headline, text format, and duration of the placement to get attentions.

Lastly, the SPONSORED AD. “Sponsored ads are placed at the beginning, middle or end of ezine or newsletter articles. By reason of their placement and size, they tend to perform better than classified ads but not as well as solo ads,” Akalanze wrote.

One of the common examples of sponsor ad is pay-per-click campaign.

Other Viral Advertising Techniques

Apart from TV commercials, you can use your talent in writing to spread your word online. When you write something and people will like it, they will repost it on their blog or tell their friends about it. Webmasters will also pick your writing pieces and for publication

You can also take advantage of the different social community sites such as MySpace. If you like, create funny commercials to get notice but make sure, you have explained the benefits clearly.

As what Viveck Sharma, an expert author in EzineArticles, wrote in her articles which entitled Viral Advertising – A New Genre, “The main idea is to fill your audience with emotions of love, hate, happiness or anger about a particular issue. While doing viral advertising, you should forget about pleasing everyone and support a particular target group to produce 100% emotions in them.”

Conclusion

Viral advertising is a difficult marketing technique but if you let your crazy imagination work, success will follow right through. If your ideas are not working, research for more buzz marketing strategies and if possible, invest on some viral softwares for quicker circulation.

Without a doubt, sending out emails can make you popular. When you send emails to people, it makes them think they are special. In fact, this is probably the reason why the concept “email marketing” is born. Email Marketing is one of those spread-the-word techniques used in Internet Business. For now, let me tell you the top ten viral email campaign used to entertain your customers and friends.

Funny Videos

Everyone seeks humor. They still want to laugh after a very stressful day at work. This is probably the reason why YouTube is very popular nowadays. These stressful people are searching for various hilarious videos to laugh for a while.

On the other hand, it will also be a great idea if you are the one who will deliver those videos in their inbox. If you want to start a blog but you can’t think of any niches, begin it by posting some of the craziest and funniest videos from YouTube, MetaCafe, Google Video etc. Do the posting regularly so that the search engines will easily recognize your blog or site. Believe me, there is a huge demand for entertaining videos and people all over the world will never get tired watching it.

Once you have collected some clicks, never hesitate to make friends with these people. Get their email address, send them a nicely-written introduction script and if possible, give them newsletters about the significance of funny videos in life.

Jokes!

Of course, when you send out videos to your customers or friends, never forget to email jokes. A joke is always a joke no matter how old is it. People want also to read jokes because they are short and full of humor in it. It doesn’t require critical analysis to read a joke. Once you read it, you can easily understand what it means.

But be careful not to offend your customers with your jokes. Not all people are born equal. Some are too serious and can’t get along with your jokes. To avoid this scenario from happening, better search for funny jokes online and post them below the videos you have created.

Funny videos and jokes should go hand-in-hand and it’s up to you how to use these methods to your advantage.

Christmas Emails

As of I’m writing this article (12-2008), Christmas is around the corner and what’s great way of connecting with your loved ones and friends than sending them Christmas emails or ecards. Christmas is the season of greetings and although you didn’t meet those people in flesh, it will be nice if you make these people smile for a while.

Creative HTML Email

If you have some knowledge on hyper-text markup languages, why not share it to your customers and friends. HTML tags are very easy and even beginners can learn it. Your customers will love you more if you are going to offer them something they don’t know but of beneficial to them.

Broadcast Emails

From what I’ve read, a broadcast email software helps your marketing campaign into hundred folds. With this type of viral software at hand, “you can create, manage and send your own personalized email marketing messages to your customers (mailworkz.com).”

In short, investing your money to this software will be a great choice, right?

Celebrity Emails

Now if you are a big fanatic of those Hollywood celebrities like Matthew Fox or Katherine Heigl, your email campaign should center on showbizness. To those who love gossips and create make-believe stories, this will be a great niche for you. You can begin by creating a showbiz blog, collect news and a photo of all the famous celebrities out there and once, your blog receives thousands of readers, it’s time to make some grounds and earn money. How? Use the viral techniques I’ve mentioned above.

Birthday Cards

It will also be a good practice if you’ll get some personal information (e.g. birth dates) from your readers and every time their birthday comes, send them an email telling them your wishes and how glad are you to meet them online. There are numerous birthday card templates online, I see no reasons why you can’t send them your simple greeting.

Business Emails

Nowadays, everyone seeks for marketing advices on how they can earn money online or offline. If you think you are a good entrepreneur who got the skills and experience, never hesitate to share these ideas with them. When you do this technique, these people will be thankful and will come back to you for more.

Friendship Emails

Do you have friends? Are you the type of person who wants to invite various people in MySpace or FaceBook? If you answer yes then think of ways on how you can convert this hobby into money. Start emailing them with friendship quotes, inspiring videos about friendship and tutorial podcast on how to win friends.

Anyone wants to be loved and be loved that’s why; you’ll have to think of ways on how you can build unforgettable relationship with them. Marketing is about making friendships anyway.

Read Emails and Get Paid

This might sound very interesting to you but beware! The Get-Paid-To-Read-Emails sites are not generous. Some of them are even scams. From what I’ve learned, the average rate for every email message that is read in 15-45 seconds will only cost one cent.

For this, here’s my suggestion: once you join a site like this, get ready with a new email account. Don’t be satisfied with only one site, sign up for four to five sites and make sure, you are in great shape and read their emails with great interest.

Final Thoughts

Never limit yourself with these top ten viral emails. Do your research online, I’m sure you can find more. Viral Marketing is about spread your word to the world and this is not only limited to email marketing.