This is from an unrelated Media Bistro article.
You’re at a lunch, or with a client, or out somewhere talking digital stuff with your own universe of digerati. Your client, your colleague, or maybe even you, suddenly find words like these spilling out of your mouth. “We want this site to go viral.” Inside, you want to die a little. Outside, you can see people nodding along. That’s a sign of trouble right there.
The point of this isn’t to make fun of anyone for not being hip or knowledgeable enough about terms. Just that, using these particular terms in 2010 doesn’t mean anything, and unnecessarily clouds what could be an interesting discussion.
Viral Marketing
When we say we want something to go viral, what we’re really saying is that we want our Widget (whether that’s a website, banner ad, trailer, text message, whatever) to reach as many people as possible as quickly as possible. Viral implies computer virus, as if just making something into easy-to-spread digital content is enough. It’s not and never will be.
As a digital worker person, I’ve used this, said it to clients, to friends, a lot of different people. Marketers especially want this magic bullet, as if making a promotion digital will somehow automatically make it compelling, and therefore increase reach.
The truth is, viral marketing is a pseudo-computer-scientific way of saying, “Electronic word of mouth.” It means you’ve got something that can take advantage of digital spaces, and let your audience spread messages to their friends and friends of friends in lots of different digital places more quickly. Instead of watching a trend take shape over months, it takes place over days, sometimes hours, depending on how connected your audience is. It’s great that we work in a medium that makes this possible, but there’s a catch.
No matter how digital your delivery is, the message still needs to be compelling. If the message isn’t compelling, you’ll never get people to talk about your Widget no matter how ‘viral’ you made it.
And if someone says they’ve cracked a magic formula for making their message compelling 100% of the time, well, there’s this bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to show you that can be yours for a discount …
The point? People tell their friends about interesting things. Viral marketing doesn’t mean anything. Figuring out how to craft a compelling message that will register with your audience, that’s everything.