Jurvetson (2000) defines viral marketing as a “network-enhanced word of mouth”. It was first used 1997 to promote the e-mail service Hotmail. The service grew from zero to 12 million users in 18 months. Bonello (2006, p. 38) have a similar definition and defines it as “a piece of content so good that people want to pass it on”. This means that a company expose its brand on the web to get consumers to voluntarily spread its message further.

Albinsson, Lörnell and Zetterlund (2009, p. 38-39) have produced a few success factors for a viral campaign:

• A campaign on the web must stand out to get the customers attention, and should include customer participation.
• It is important to have a good campaign idea, without a good idea it does not matter what marketing channel that is used. Also, the idea must be timely, which mean that the marketers must have a good understanding of the environment and do a lot of research before the campaign.
• Content is king. Without an interesting content the company will not have the customers participation. Though, it is important to not push the content to customers, the customers should be willingly to participate.
• It requires experience, feeling and knowledge to find the right marketing channels. Campaigns must take place where the audience is.
• To achieve maximal diffusion of a message a company could create ambassadors, and let them try the product before everybody else. These people should have a strong position in social networks and be the ones that “regular” people listens to, like an opinion leader.
• When campaigning on the web the company must accept a looser control and let the brand circulate freely. It is a risk, but necessary to success with a viral campaign.
• To succeed with a viral campaign the marketers must find incitements that motivates the consumer to participate and to spread the message to others.

It is no news that a satisfied customer is the best ambassador for the company and its products. A customer’s network could be huge and thanks to social media rumors are spread fast as lightning. Though, negative criticism is spread as quickly as positive which means that companies must respect the dissatisfied customers (Carlsson, 2009, p. 39).

References

Albinsson, S., Lörnell, J., & Zetterlund, D. (2009). Viral Marknadsföring – Att skapa en framgångsrik viral kampanj. Helsingborg: Lunds Universitet, Campus Helsingborg.

Bansal, H. S., & Voyer, P., A. (2000). Word-of-Mouth Processes Within a Services Purchase Decision Context. Journal of Service Research, 3(2), 166-178.

Bonello, D. (2006). Explore the online options. Marketing, 2006, 37-38.

Carlsson, L. (2009). Marknadsföring och Kommunikation i Sociala Medier. Göteborg: Kreafon.

Jurvetson, S. (2000, may 1). What is Viral Marketing? Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Fetched 2009-11-04, from http://www.dfj.com/news/article_25.shtml

Tweet. A message must fit within 140 characters, and is called a tweet. It can be compared with a post, a message or an update. The reason that it is just 140 characters is so it is possible to send tweets within a SMS from your phone.

@Username. To send a tweet directly to another user, you need to put her username into the tweet. This is done be putting @ before her username, like @username, she will then get a notification about the tweet, even if she is not following you. This is used for replying to a tweet and/or to mention someone in a tweet.

Direct message (DM). This could be compared to a private tweet, no one except the one you send it to can see it. You can just send DMs to people who are following you, and receive them only from people you are following.

ReTweet (RT). This is the function to share ideas or messages that someone has tweeted, you simply repost (retweet) it. A correctly RT should look something like this: “RT @username: The original tweet”. RT is a good way to find new interesting people to follow. You could even keep RT in mind when you write a regular tweet, if you use all the 140 characters no one can RT your tweet. A “retweetably” tweet should therefore use less characters, so that “RT” and your username fits.

#Hashtag. With a hashtag you can categorize, or tag, your tweet. You want to do this, to get people who are not following to see the tweet in question. This could be used in example when twittering about a TV show, #AmericanIdol, or when participating in a seminar, #TED. To create a hashtag just put a # before the tag, like #tag, and it transforms into a link.

Shortened URLs. Since Twitter just gives you 140 characters per tweet, you need to watch your words. This is a problem when including a URL into a tweet, some URLs are even longer than 140 characters. To solve this, Twitter has a built-in URL shortener. Automatically, Twitter transform a long URL into a shorter one which directs you to the right website.

Profiles. This contains information about a user. You can see the users friends, photos, contact details and so on. Maybe the most important part is the wall that shows the users own updates but also his friends’ message to him.

Pages. About the same as Profiles, but intended for local business, brands, musicians, actors and similar. Regular users can become a fan och the page and interact with it as like with any other user.

Groups. When people shares interests, activities, or similar, they can create a group. The creator decides if the groups shall be open for everyone to join, or just for some specific peoples. Groups have kind of the same look as profiles/pages but not the same features, which we describes below.

News Feed. This is what the users see when the login. It is like the wall that we mentioned earlier but contains messages and activities from all the friends that the user in question follows. An essential part is that it even contain content from pages that the user is following, but not content from the groups.

ROI could be applied on social media and in example measure how the sales of a given product have changed since the company become active in social media. Though, social media is more about the human interactivity and not something that is defined or measured by numbers (Nüüd, 2009).

“The problem with trying to determine ROI for social media is you are trying to put numeric quantities around human interactions and conversations, which are not quantifiable.” (Falls, 2008)

Nüüd (2009) defines a new term for measuring social media usage: return of engagement (ROE). It will not measure the economic numbers, as ROI, but the customers engagement for the company on the web. In example the amount of comments, questions and everything else that increase the dialog. Dosh Dosh (2008) sums up four goals and benefits for social media usage:

Increased brand awareness. When interacting with others in social media channels the company build awareness for its brand and increase their visibility. Also, networking will drive traffic back to the website.

Improved reputation. When a company are active at many social media networks and services the opportunity to respond to feedback and answering questions increases. If they do this right, the reputation will improve.

Personal development. A big part of networking is observation, following the right people and the companies knowledge levels will improve. It can give an insight in how the market, and trends, looks from a customers point of view.

Relationships with benefits. This goal have some similarities with an improved reputation. Social media builds beneficial relationships, such as links and recommendations. Though, it is important to offer something back, like an effort to interact with the customers.

So, ROE can be used to measure the company’s social profit, the dialog that in the end will increase the company’s economic profit, the ROI. ROE can be likened to a step towards ROI and can be used to predict the company’s future (Nüüd, 2009).

References

Armstrong, G., & Kotler, P. (2006). Marketing (8th ed.) New Jersey: Prentice Hall

Dosh Dosh. (2008). Social Media Networking and ROI: How to Maximize Value and Minimize Cost. Fetch 2009-11-03, from http://www.doshdosh.com/social-media-networking-and-roi/

Falls. J. (2008). What Is The ROI For Social Media? Social Media Explorer. Fetched 2009-11-04, from http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/2008/10/28/what-is-the-roi-for-social-media/

Nüüd, D. (2009). Return of Engagement – ROI:s högra hand. Mindpark. Fetch 2009-11-03, from http://mindpark.se/return-of-engagement-rois-hogra-hand/

1. Harnessing collective intelligence

There is an enormous mount of information on the web, and now it is easier to find and use it. The number one place to find information on the web is at search engines and social software (like blogging, social bookmarking and collaborating tools) play a big role in how different pages rank.

2. Data as the next “Intel Inside”

There is a lot of different services with different functionality on the web today, and many of them can use each others benefits (like databases or APIs). In example you may use an ISBN registry when building an library service, or use PayPal’s functionality when building an e-business.

3. Innovation in assembly

With web 2.0 it is easier to combine two, or more, different services and mash them into a new one, a mashup. This is an easy and cost effective way to make new services (see the 8th point).

4. Rich user experiences

Webpages can be built in a much more user-friendly way because of new web programming techniques like XHTML, CSS, XML and JavaScript. These techniques has made it possible to create web services as powerful as computer-based programs.

5. Software above the level of a single device

When using a web service, it does not depend on which platform you use. The service is installed on a server, and not on the client, and therefore the user can use Windows, MacOS, Linux or which operating system that suits best.

6. Perpetual beta

A web service does not have the same type of release cycle as a computer-based program where the user needs to pay for every new updated version. Usually, web services does not leave the development phase and therefore the functionality always improves. Also, most of the web services are free of use.

7. Leveraging the long tail

Earlier, 80% of the internet resources could only be used by 20% of the Internet users. By understand and master web 2.0 it is possible to reach out to all users. “The Web 2.0 lesson: leverage customer-self service algorithmic data management to reach out to the entire web, to the edges and not just the center, to the long tail and not just the head”.

8. Lightweight software and business models and cost effective scalability

Web 2.0 has opened up for new business models that do not require as advanced techniques and as much resources as earlier. There are already so many services with good functionality that can be used for new services, it is not necessary to develop everything from scratch.

Tepper (2003, p. 22) means that the interactivity and collaboration are the biggest parts of web 2.0. User can now interact much easier with each other, and create collaborative documents on the web. In example, a multiple-author internal blog can serve a number of purposes: a living document of processes, a knowledge container and shorter decision cycles with comments and discussions.

A, probably familiar, big web 2.0 service with collaborative content is the free encyclopedia: Wikipedia.

References

Comer, D. E. (2007). The Internet Book (4th ed.) New Jersey: Prentice Hall

O’Reilly, T. (2005). What Is Web 2.0. Fetched 2009-10-24, from http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/6228

Tepper, M. (2003). The rise of the social software. NetWorker, 7(3), 18-23.

Warr, W. A. (2008). Social software: fun and games, or business tools? Journal of Information Science, 34(4), 591-604.