Social networking is rife with opportunities to drive traffic, particularly to kick start a viral marketing campaign. Facebook has two specific tools which can assist greatly with this – Facebook pages and Facebook applications.
The most important thing to remember when creating Facebook Pages and Applications is to give people a good reason to join. It could be a free report, money off a product or even 1 cent to everyone who joins.
Facebook Pages
Facebook fan pages can be set up on practically anything. It could be a product, brand or service, but my favorite type are off the wall ones, like “Sleeping with One Leg Out the Cover” and “Flipping the Pillow to Get to the Cold Side”.
Can you see the viral potential of a quirky Facebook page? One wacky idea can lead to a huge viral following, and lots of traffic. If you sold bedding products, the above examples would be very clever.
According to Facebook, there are already 1.4 million fan pages, which collect more than 1 million new fans everyday. That is powerful stuff, particularly as the traffic for these pages are ready and waiting on Facebook.
Once you create a Facebook page (via http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php) you can get instant traffic to the websites you put onto your Facebook page by clicking the ‘suggest to friends’ link.
Next invite people to join your new Facebook page, as when they join their status will show that “[Joe Bloggs] became a fan of [Facebook page name]” and even more people will see this and join, thus viral marketing is unleashed.
I think that the best approaches that you can take to create viral Facebook pages are the wacky idea, something „human‟ such as “I like driving in the dark”, or a Facebook page dedicated to things that people are passionate about, like tattoos or piercing.
If you need ideas, then looking at places like Yahoo Answers can give you lots of inspiration. Remember, Facebook users love fun and wacky stuff.
Facebook Applications
Please do not skip this option and assume that this method of marketing is far too technical to even consider – it isn‟t. In fact it‟s very easy to create a Facebook Application.
Facebook applications are very popular and many people love adding applications to their profile, hence the reason that they are so viral. Once again, any application downloaded will show up on the Facebook status bar, which aids viral marketing.
So get your thinking caps on and get creating applications that go Facebook wide. This is one of the best kept secrets in internet marketing.