Viral marketing: the pandemic is over

A decade or so ago, when email had reached critical global mass, we all realised that certain attachments had the power to propagate themselves.

The video with the cat jumping out of the bush. The spoof Ferrari engine sound effect that ultimately spawned the Crazy Frog phenomenon. The endless forward-this-for-good-fortune-but-die-a-painful-death-if-you-don't emails. They went round every email inbox and very quickly marketers had the brilliant idea that they could do the same for their clients.

They (we) were right of course. If you had the right piece of content, you could seed it with a few and it would spread to many. We have grown up a lot since those days. The viral marketing epidemic is over.

Share a little, share it often

The reason I say it is over is not because content no longer spreads in the same way. Quite the contrary. But the idea that you could create a flash game or a funny video and expect it to get a million hits within a week is now patently naive. Now that 200,000 videos are posted on the web every day, we need to get with the current thinking, which is that we need to do a little, but often, and keep it relevant to our target market.

Social media means that all content has the power to propagate itself. That's what we do on social media: we share information. We bookmark it so others can see it, we add comments so our opinion is added to the original discussion, we share views on Twitter, and we share images, videos and presentations for the good of our fellow man.

We do not expect each piece to "go viral". This is a redundant expression (in the original late-nineties sense) and of little relevance to what most B2B marketers are trying to do.

Think about your audience

A responsible brand that is trying to use social media to inform and support its market will put out useful content knowing that a reasonable number of interested users will look at it. Some will pass it on, others won't.

We're no longer trying to create a pandemic; we're simply producing valuable, informative material that will gradually but steadily find its way to a targeted audience. The idea of material spreading virally is not the problem; it's the idea that we should aim for the online equivalent of swine flu every time.

Viral marketing is dead; long live social media.