Having something you create go “viral” is a marketers wet dream.

But is there a science behind viral marketing? Some sort of method to the madness?

Viral marketing expert David Meerman Scott believes there is.

In a recent interview over at the Marketing Profs he share some viral marketing strategies, “The formula for success includes a combination of some great—and free—Web content (a video, blog entry, interactive tool, or e-book) that provides valuable information (or is groundbreaking or amazing or hilarious), plus a network of people to light the fire and links that make your content very easy to share,”

3 Keys To Viral Marketing Success

In case you missed it let me break out David’s viral marketing keys for you. We’ll explore them in depth to uncover some methods for you to put them into practice for your own holistic marketing campaigns.

• Great—and free—Web content (a video, blog entry, interactive tool, or e-book) that provides valuable information (or is groundbreaking or amazing or hilarious)
• A network of people to light the fire
• Links that make your content very easy to share

Great and Free Web Content

The crew over at Copyblogger says that “Content marketing is a broad term that relates to creating and freely sharing informative content as a means of converting prospects into customers and customers into repeat buyers. The primary goal is to obtain opt-in permission to deliver content via email or other medium over time. Repeated and regular exposure builds a relevant relationship that provides multiple opportunities for conversion, rather than a “one-shot” all-or-nothing sales approach.”

But David said that the key for viral marketing to work is to create “GREAT” content. Defining great is a slippery concept. And really the focus has to be on what great means for your tribe?

And I don’t know any marketer that owns a crystal ball. So how can we figure this out?

When you’re trying to create great content sometimes you hit it out of the park and other times you strike out.

A good thing to remember is Babe Ruth’s not so impressive lifetime batting average which is .342.

He was always swinging for the fences. Hoping and planning for home runs. But the majority of the time he came up short.

That didn’t stop him from trying though. He knew his fans loved it when he cranked one out of the park. He was pretty good at it too. And for fun he threw in a little showmanship as well. Pointing with his bat to the part of the park where he expected to launch the ball.

He’s now a hall-of-famer and one of the greatest players the game has ever seen.

So keep on swinging. Pay attention to which posts get spread around. Dig into them and try to discover what made people share them. Was it the headline, the slant of the piece, or was it a trending topic that was hot gossip around the water cooler?

A Network of People to Light the Fire

Is bigger always better? Kevin Kelly co-founder of wired magazine thinks not. He came up with the premise of 1000 True Fans. Here’s what he had to say about it:

A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author – in other words, anyone producing works of art – needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.

A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can’t wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.

So the next time you friend someone on facebook or connect with someone on twitter and you see that they have like a gazillion people following them don’t worry about it.

Work on getting better at connecting and communicating with your own tribe. Discover their likes and dislikes. Their hopes and fears. What they’re talking about and interested in.

The more you can be of service to them the better your life will become.

They’ll be eager and want to share what you’re up to.

And speaking of your Tribe, do you know where they are? Have you connected with them on facebook, twitter, delicious, stumbleupon, digg? Are they hanging out in forums? Or are they meeting in the real world.

Business is all about relationships.

Scott Stratten from UnMarketing said it perfectly during an interview with Michael Port, “If you believe that business is built on relationships make building them your business.”

Links That Make Your Content Very Easy To Share

This site is built using wordpress which makes it very easy for me to find plugins that let readers share my content easily. The plugins I use on this site and my personal development site are:

• Sexy Bookmarks
• Simple facebook share button
• Tweetmeme button

The people over at the Social Media Examiner got crafty with the use of these tool and embedded a tweet this option right into their Social Media Marketing Industry Report. Pure genius!

Don’t place too much pressure on yourself right out of the gate. Viral marketing takes time, patience, insight and practice.

But if you do figure it out please come back here and share what worked!

Have fun, make money, change the world.

Ian