Social Media, Web 2.0 marketing, and Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is nothing new, but as all things SEO and web 2.0 it takes time to rise above the antiquated methods of the past from a traditional advertising perspective. As marketing modalities from yesteryear continue to fall by the wayside as obsolete, there are a few noteworthy trends in automation and viral marketing occurring a break neck speed.

As RSS feeds, social bookmarking and virtual communities seeding the exchange of information, it doesn’t take hours or days to disseminate information and create a buzz, merely the click of a button.

Instead of a multi million dollar ad campaign which would have been the preferred method in the past for a new product launch. With a little ingenuity, the proper understanding of the flow of the deep web 2.0 phenomenon (and how it impacts search engines) along with some clever link bait, one can essentially create a spike in traffic or sales within hours from the time they publish their content.

Not to mention the mere thought of this viral outbreak in internet marketing would make a traditional advertising & marketing agency exec lose sleep at night just trying to figure out (a) why they never thought of that and (b) how much money they could have made if they had.

It’s not always about the Benjamin’s, it’s more about the integrity of the message and the ability for millions to share a funny post, put a red flag on some activity to stir things up in the blogosphere or just to ride the wave of the future of information technology. Whatever the impetus, there is no sign of this form of communication (blogging, link baiting, e-commerce & social marketing) to stand down any time soon.

Here is the breakout on a typical day that someone’s link goes hot…