When Viral is a Good Thing

You hear the buzz about ‘viral marketing’.
Viral means something that propagates quickly in the cyber world, something that gets distributed quickly in a natural way (i.e. people redistribute by emailing or reposting on sites, click on the site or video or pics, etc)  I bet you get those viral type of emails everyday—a joke, a chain email, letter to Fatima, funny or interesting YouTube video, little movies, etc. Wouldn’t you love it if something about you or your business went viral and you got tons of attention and leads?
Well…you can!

The easiest way to get yourself viral right off the bat is to look at your automatic’signature line’ when you send out an email–do you have one? That’s the automatic information you can tell your email program to put at the bottom of every email that you send. Usually people just put their name and contact information (like a phone number and/or website). Make your signature interesting—besides your name and website address, make sure you have an ‘attention getting’ tag line that makes the reader want to go to click on the website link. Any whatever the tag line is, make sure it is consistent with what you do, a good image, but an ‘interesting’ image.

Here are a couple of interesting signature tag lines from Fantasia Sales Reps:

“Your Business is Our Pleasure!” Book a Fantasia Romance Home Party with me  have the time of your life : http://barbscloset.fantasiahomeparties.com/

“If You’re Staying Home at Night, Why Not Make it Fun?”
Book one of my FUN Fantasia Parties and Make it a Night to Remember!”
https://fantasiahomeparties.com/

Here’s a great link for hundreds of interesting signatures lines: http://coolsig.com/
 
Now, here’s the kicker. Next time you get one of those viral emails and before you pass it on to people in your email address book, stop and do a couple things. The first is to make sure you have that great email signature. Utilizing the tips I suggested above, send yourself a couple emails to make sure it looks good and reads well. If you don’t know how to set up an automatic signature in your emails, you can usually find it under “Preferences” in one of the top tabs of your email program.

Then, ‘clean it up’ by removing all the junk in the content that’s been repeated and any other copy not related to the actual content. (For instance, take out any forwarding addresses, all the other “to” addresses ). It’s ready now, and your email besides being something funny, or informative, it now becomes a big subtle ad! Think about this: hundreds, possibly THOUSANDS of people are going to get/read this email eventually—and if your catchy signature line is at the bottom, you would then have all those hundreds or thousands of people looking at what you wrote—and possibly clicking or contacting you! It’s worth the time and teeny bit of effort.

And another link about signature lines and email etiquette: http://email.about.com/cs/netiquettetips/qt/et020301.htm

Get viral. Go ahead and forward those emails—just make sure to add the right message/signature and make it work for you!

Rina Valan

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