Viral marketing isn’t a new phenomenon. It’s been used since before the Internet existed, but the online world makes it far easier to spread ideas. It’s a method that can benefit freelancers.

What is viral marketing? In a nutshell, it’s any method of promoting a concept (message, product or “content”) in a manner that allows it to be self-propagating, or not far from it.

Maki of DoshDosh has written extensively about viral marketing in general, and had a simple, to-the-point explanation of viral marketing in the online world:

Your message is the virus. The carriers are your audience.

Catch popular attention with your concept, and it’ll get passed on by others who want to share it.

So how do you get people’s attention and how does this apply to freelancers? What are good formats for viral content, and how do you even produce viral content?

How Do You Get Viral Attention?
There are several ways that you can get readers/ viewers/ listeners to propagate viral content.

1. Be exclusive, at least initially. Allowing others to be part of an exclusive group will often give people an incentive to talk about you or your message.
2. Employ an element of surprise. Uniqueness of idea isn’t always enough. Novelty does work, but interest will taper off faster if the idea is too novel and otherwise lacking value. For example, LisaNova, an online comedian, had the novel idea of free video collabcharacters. Unfortunately, many people think she was serious, and from that viewpoint, her approach is far too annoying.
3. Trip emotional triggers: Surprise, joy, sadness, anger, fear, disgust.
4. Be targeted. If your viral content is aimed at or about current online influencers, it’s potentially more viral. They’ll start the conversation for you – whether to praise or criticize – and their influencees will carry on the conversation.
5. Promote your campaigns. For a viral marketing campaign to work, you have to get enough word of mouth from other people. Start with willing colleagues, and maybe they’ll have their own colleagues that’ll tip the viral effect. Use microblogging services (e.g., Twitter) and guest articles. All this employs the idea of Six Degrees of Separation and the concept that “word of mouth” is the fastest way in the world of communicating an idea – whether it’s in person, on the phone, or via some digital form such as IM/chat, email, microblogging or whatever.

What is a Good Format for Viral Content?
Viral messages get passed on through numerous mediums: verbally; through IM/ chat; Twitter or other microblogging services; an email; or websites that link to your digital content or embed it. So a viral effect can be achieve in a number of ways, and to facilitate that, viral content has to be easy to propagate. Here are a few forms of potentially viral content.

1. Video. Web video particularly seems to catch the attention of the online world. Some of the popular video series so far include:

1. Ask a Ninja.
2. You Suck at Photoshop.
3. Will It Blend?
4. Pepsi/ Coke + Mentos soda spray fountains.

All of these are catchy enough that they’ve been embedded on thousands of web pages, virally propagating interest in them. They’re all unique, but Will It Blend actually promotes a product – Blendtec’s commercial blender. In the video below, host Tom Dickson tests the Blendtec on golf balls.

The diet soda and mentos idea (below) is so easy to implement (and for the most part fun) that it spawned hundreds of similar videos.

According to a MarketingSherpa survey, web video in an ad can increase viewer response. Likewise, web video in general can be a very effective means of virally spreading a message, since the content is generally easily embedded into website and blog pages. Music videos can be especially effective. As Chris Brogan points out, musician Chris Blake created a [video for "Someone Else," a song from his WAVE album, simply by using images and text. The text came from search results when he looked up "Biggest regrets" on Google.

2. Ebooks. Free ebooks go in and out of favor, but the ones whose authors openly tell you to redistribute are often the books you'll see over and over again. Hence, a viral effect.

3. Websites and blogs. Groundbreaking or otherwise attention-getting articles can go viral. There are numerous websites out there that enjoy constant popularity as a result. Articles get promoted and linked to by readers and other writers, thereby getting propagated semi-virally. Skelliewag has list of nearly forty viral article ideas to consider.

4. Themes and plugins for the free WordPress blogging platform are also immensely popular, and have even created a mini online economy for "premium" versions.

5. An image or diagram. A clever diagram or a captivating image can be just as viral as other content.

6. A message on a t-shirt. (While this an offline medium, if the shirt is available exclusively on a t-shirt website, then the idea has the potential to go viral.)

7. A slogan or saying. Twitter can be an effective medium to "pass it on." So can your Facebook wall.

8. A podcast. Podcasts don't enjoy nearly the kind of popularity that web videos do, though a well-executed series that's catchy and properly promoted has the potential to be viral as well.

How Do You Produce Viral Content?
Viral marketing can never be an exact science, but you can prep yourself to produce the kind of creative thinking that's necessary. In fact, it's intersects quite closely with the same sort of effort needed to simply think creatively:

1. Consume information, esp. related to pop culture.
2. Track and tap into trends. Study trends relevant to your freelancing niche, both directly and peripherally.
3. Employ the Medici Efect by broadening the sources of your daily diet of information. Absorb news from several niches/ markets, and in several forms (audio, video, TV, newsprint, online articles). Cross-discipline thinking is often where the greatest ideas come from.
4. Be unique. Using the same idea someone else has just won't work. But just as with patents, you might be able to take something that worked before and give it a new twist. So study other viral marketing campaigns.
5. Be fast and be first when you have a new, unique idea.

How Does Viral Marketing Apply to Freelancers?
If you have a main website (and you should) to promote your brand of services, then you can apply viral marketing for several purposes:

1. Draw attention to yourself.
2. Display your skills in a creative manner.
3. Increase traffic to your website, and thus your potential client base.

The more attention you draw to yourself, the greater the chances that someone will be interested in your services. You've proven that you can get attention online, which is a commodity. Provided that the attention is not negative (or sometimes even if it is), then that should eventually translate into an increased demand for your services - especially if your work is targeted to the online market.

Related posts:

1. Start Your Own Viral Marketing Campaign
2. Marketing, Branding and Work-Finding Strategies for Freelance Writers
3. Viral Blogging