So you’re wondering how to go viral, eh?
Anyone with a working brain (i.e. if you can even WONDER how to go viral), diligent planning and research, access to a bit of capital, and a data-driven approach CAN achieve viral growth to some degree.
However, very few actually do this to a significant degree. This is mainly because most people don’t truly understand the mechanics of viral marketing.
This sort of education falls into such a gray area that it’s not commonly included in any business or technical educational curriculum, and it’s such a complex beast that those who do end up teaching about it only understand a few pieces of it themselves.
(If you haven’t read my last post on what viral marketing actually is, read that first.)
Most of the people who DO write about viral growth mechanics are not trying to teach day 1 founder how to go viral. They’re usually VCs who use a working knowledge of viral marketing in order to evaluate potential investments.
While these individuals have great blog posts on specific aspects of viral marketing, they are often not the ones actually BUILDING the viral products they’re investing in or advising on (at least not anymore), so their exposure to the nuts and bolts will be a bit more theoretical and not as practical as founders may need.
A few of these same individuals have some startup experience, but were only exposed to one or a few examples in practice, many of which are now likely dated approaches.
Others are actually brilliant (Andrew Chen’s blog and Adam Nash’s blog are two of my favorites. Got any others? Hit me with a comment and let me know!), but viral marketing and growth is only one puzzle piece in their much larger puzzle, so you likely won’t get the complete picture you need to actually BUILD a viral site or app.
Another reason why most people don’t create viral sites, apps or products is because most business models, industries or site structures are not inherently viral in nature.
If a website or app doesn’t instantly take off like wildfire after allocating a bit of attention to their viral marketing campaign, many founders get frustrated and shift their focus back to more traditional, linear forms of digital marketing. They stop researching how to go viral entirely because they don’t believe that since their site isn’t CURRENTLY viral, that their site CAN’T go viral.
Sometimes they’re right. Other times, they’re just uneducated.
The chicken, or the egg?
For most founders, all aspects of their viral marketing education have come AFTER they’ve started a site or app. After all, most people start companies because they have an idea – not because they’ve been pre-educated in viral marketing mechanics.
They then learn a bit of the higher-level theory behind what SOME people refer to as viral marketing (in reality, most of the time this is actually content marketing), and then try to build in “viral carriers” (methods of sharing or sending invites such as sharing buttons or referral systems) AFTER they create their site or app.
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