Many companies completely forget to include the following viral strategies or they are simply looked over. The sad truth is that these strategies are almost always EXTREMELY simple to implement. 1. Add to Favorites: One of the easiest tools and effective tools for getting people to come back to your website. There are typically pre-written scripts or scripts easy enough to implement. A must have to start with... 2. Recommend / Email to a friend: Not allowing your customer a route sending your website off to his friends or co-workers could lead to a major amount of lost opportunities. Make sure that you have some form on allowing customers to recommend, and definitely make sure it is EASY. 3. Add to Del.icio.us: Although this is not as easy as the first two, with today's age of social media and how much it is used, it is crucial to getting recurring site traffic, almost as much so as "Add to Favorites." 4. Share on Facebook: Customers and site user's are spending more and more time on Facebook and giving them the ability to share stories, articles, landing page's, etc. on their profile can get you some major traffic and conversion. 5. Social Media Madness: Other than the above listed items, social media is your friend. If you are a blog or publisher network, then add items like "digg this" or "submit to netscape" and even things like google bookmarks. Giving your customers and/or users an opportunity to pass the word along and keep coming back to your site can only be an advantage to your overall success. Obviously you don't want to over do it, with links ALL over the place and scattered that it would drive someone insane. Just make sure that you are giving people the opportunity to spread the word.

Yesterday night I had a conversation with a friend of mine that I hadn't seen in a long time and it has inspired me to write a post about networking. I have found that over the last couple years and as I get older, how powerful and valuble networking really is.

I have attended conferences and networking events since around 2002 and never really found value in this until around 2004. Granted, I was just barely learning the ropes and very "green" at the time, but I had no idea the value of networking almost 5 years ago. I was sent to many vendor related events, many conferences and such, my focus was to try to solicit business for my company at the time. What I didn't realize is how important it was to build my network of people that I knew and stay in touch with them.

Fast forward to now and the last year or so. I have been trying to attend conferences, networking events, meet-ups, meet and greets, and even inter-company related events. I have goals of attending these events, sometimes its for knowledge and almost always it is to expand my network.

Okay, so it is question time...Why are these events are so useful?!

Answer: Expanding your network is absolutely critical to your future successes, no matter what they be.

Chatting with my friend last night I really stressed the importance in this. Building your networking and laying a foundation for your own personal brand is extremely empowering, at least, in my eyes it is. Obviously, if you are young and shy, that is absolutely normal, but give it a go and try it out.

You might say to yourself, "well, I am still in school" or "I am just starting out." The truth is, typically people are very understanding and you never know the value you might have until you actually talk to people. I use to be this guy until 2004. I attended multiple events in which I didn't have a card, I didn't save the cards and I didn't keep in touch with those I met. To this day, I think of the relationships I could have maintained and wish I would have.

Of course, being the geek that I am, I will bring in "LinkedIn" and the social media aspects of it into play. Finding a place to stay in touch with people, use it as a "next-gen rolodex" and keep people updated of what's going on in your world is highly crucial. It all goes back to building your personal brand.

LinkedIn has been a lifesaver to me because I am able to maintain a contact list that is literally in real time keeping me updated with the happenings of the people in my network. Also, not that I am advocating buying a business account, but, business users are able to expand their network through features like introductions, in-mail, etc. Being able to connect with people outside your everyday network or someone that you would never really meet is just one more touch-point in your personal growth.

Truthfully, in the end, it's all about the relationships you make and maintain, bottom line.

After receiving a book about Creating Customer Evangelists, I was inspired to re-visit a post I had written a while back on the new generation of Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM), Viral Marketing and Evangelism. Currently we live in a very technological and extremely different world than even as little as a 2-3 years ago, let alone a decade. It seems as though the traditional marketing years are losing their dominance rather quickly. Although, it is true, the traditional marketing strategies will never go away. The question we really need to ask ourselves is difficult as we are individuals from all sorts of groups, such as marketers, advertisers, search marketers, SEO experts, evangelists, etc. etc. So, what is this difficult question that I speak so highly of? Where is marketing going?...and..Who are the real evangelists? This question has really to deal with a couple major techniques and I will explain this. But, really, we are talking about Word of Mouth Marketing, Viral Marketing and Customer/User Evangelism at it's best. I'll start with an example. Let's look at digg.com. The site is a breeding ground for open source evangelists that are really technologists at heart. This is a prime example of viral marketing strategies that are really driven by the customer. Well, in this case open source software, it would really be the user. Another example with digg.com, is Apple. Apple's customer base is really expanding at a dramatic pace. Yes, they do have those extremely comedic commercials on TV and traditional marketing techniques, this much we know. What I want to delve into is the number of evangelists they have developed around the world that continuously tell others about their products. I'll even give you a personal example, anyone that asks me whether to buy a Mac or PC, I recommend the Mac. This is an example or word of mouth marketing and customer evangelism at its best. So, why is this important to the rest of us and why is this important to marketers? Well, the answers to these questions are quite simple. We need to learn as marketers and brand marketers to really build around our customer base. Create an outlet to ensure that our customers are becoming evangelists for our organization. Just like the traditional marketing tactics, we will not see an end to internal company evangelism roles, this is in-escapable. There is though a great opportunity, now, more than ever, our customers, employees and clients are becoming evangelists and marketers on our behalf. Thus, we are enlisting volunteers to speak highly about your company's products and services without any internal campaigns or effort. So, we have address the what's, the who's, the why's. But, really, how do we get this done and how do we execute on this. Truthfully, the answer is right at your fingertips. As I mentioned above about Apple and digg.com. Find out where your users/customers are going and doing and really ensure that they have an avenue to speak highly of you. Creating catchy and sticky products and campaigns will also give your customers an opportunity to spread the word. Learn your social media sites and how you can use them to your advantage. From a search engine optimization and/or marketing standpoint, you can use blogging to increase rankings and readers. Most people really relate blogging to blogging for dollars, but in this case, blog for your brand. Ensuring that your blogging is very well optimized for word of mouth and viral techniques, like email this, digg this, share on facebook, etc. is highly critical. Gives your brand a massive growth opportunity without you even lifting a finger. Make this all highly accessible and let your customers spread the word for you, because, like the saying goes, "If you build it, they will come."