So what exactly is the difference between Viral Marketing and Linkbait;
Seth Godin – Viral marketing is an idea that spreads–and an idea that while it is spreading actually helps market your business or cause.
SEJ – “Linkbait focuses on creating unique, useful and provocative content that people respond to by linking to it and sharing with others.”
So if you think of linkbait as the worm and viral marketing as the dicussions people have about your superb fish supper
This is how the life line of a piece of Psychomedia linkbait looks:
1) Decide what you need most – Traffic – Links – exposure
2) Decide how far the content can go and where it can be hosted (i.e a landing page onsite)
3) Match up your restrictions with current trends and network contacts
4) Brainstorm your content
5) Create inventive content hook matches your needs i.e - this could be graphical, resourceful , contentious or funny
5) Set-up link tracking for the content
6) Where can the content be syndicated – use existing networks
7) Networks may need to be established depending on your limitations (i.e if we cannot use our existing networks)
publish the content
9) Promote and track
10) Watch it fly and report back to you
11) Run a follow up article (particularly good if the content does not fly) a retraction or negative comment about the article to drum up interest
12) syndicate via personal networks
12) Check stats and report to back to you
This article by Vitaly from the excellent Smashing Magazine is a good read to understand more; http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/05/28/golden-rules-of-linkbaiting-principles-strategies-and-effective-rules/
Please read our linkbait examples page;
And some linkbait i have created:
http://www.raketherake.com/rakeback-news/2010/03/11/8-year-old-battles-online-gaming-giant-for-500000-winnings/ (last count this was picked up by around 40+ sites)
http://eu.techcrunch.com/2009/11/17/is-dinner_guest-a-sick-joke-or-a-real-murderer-on-twitter/ (i created the killer)