What is Viral Traffic?

Empower Network Viral Marketing

Rudy | on June 23, 2013 

What is Viral Traffic?

Viral marketing on the internet has exploded in recent years. We’ve all seen the likes of YouTube and Facebook soar in popularity -these are great examples of viral marketing. What makes them so successful is the way in which they spread their content – through word of mouth (or the internet equivalent). When you consider that the population of the internet is 360 million people and growing, you can begin to appreciate how effective viral traffic can be!

So how does viral traffic work?

Well, in a nutshell, visitors to your site see what you have to offer, and if they like what they see they’ll tell their friends. They’ll either email their friends or post it on a site like Facebook. Their friends will see these emails or site postings and visit the site that their friend suggested.Chances are that they’ll also like what they see, and they’ll tell their friends. The message spreads like wildfire, just like a virus -it doubles and doubles and doubles every time. That’s viral traffic in action!

As you can imagine, the traffic potential here is limited only by the population of the planet. I mean, that’s outlandish and it’s not realistic but the potential here really is unlimited as the population of the internet grows and the growth in social Web sites takes off.
Word of mouth spreads incredibly quickly.

If we take the analogy that we spoke about earlier and you assume that one person tells two of their friends and they tell two friends and so on and so forth, it only takes 10 generations of that to happen for one message to reach over 1,000 people.
What would happen if you started not with one person but with 100 or 500 or 1,000 people?

Can you imagine how much more quickly your message will spread if you tap into this incredible resource?

Consider social networking sites like Fark, Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon. They are hugely popular, and the traffic that these sites get everyday would make you green with envy.

Visitors come to these sites because they’re looking for recommendations to find stuff on the internet. These sites have built a reputation of showcasing interesting web sites, and so when people visit these sites and find a link to your site they’re going to be far more likely to visit.

We want to use that trust element to our advantage when building our viral marketing plan. As you’re about to see, building that trust relationship between you and your visitors is key to successfully generating viral traffic.

This entry was posted in Empower Network