That’s why I put together some time-tested and proven tips and strategies designed to give you a big boost in growing your business.  I think you’ll find a lot of value from the quick-read ideas presented in “Profit-Rich Marketing: Proven Strategies to Help You Grow Your Business,” which are designed for easy implementation.

The practical marketing approach and proven strategies will help you to:

• Create the Marketing Mindset
• Create Explosive Growth in Your Business
• Utilize Marketing Secrets of the Masters
• Measure Marketing Success
• Design Profit-Rich Marketing Materials
• Write Copy Like the Pros
• Build Your Online Money Machine
• Drive Targeted Traffic
• Use Blog Marketing to Build Your Business
• Monetize Your Social Media Marketing Efforts

Get more details on my “Profit-Rich Marketing: Proven Strategies to Help You Grow Your Business” and leave us a comment to let us know some of the ways you’d like to improve your business.

What’s really cool about it is that EVERYONE who participates will get their photo in the November issue of Fast Company! http://fcinf.com/v/bdtg

Here’s where you can upload your photo to Fast Company

Spread the word! This is a great example of viral marketing.

Ford Saeks

In the last post I talked about the phenomenon Pants on the Ground and other successful viral videos. While he’s on minute 14 of his 15 minutes of fame, Larry Platt got so much press that he now has many more business opportunities. While you may not have the platform that launched Larry Platt’s viral video, you certainly have the same potential for your business.

So where do you start?

Start with actually creating videos!

The key is to produce videos on your products & services and on your area of expertise.  Ideas and concepts for viral videos start with your outcome. Your outcome should be to add value,  solve problems, and communicate your ideas and concepts. When you create something of value the marketplace will decide if it’s going to go viral or not.  But it starts with you creating the videos.  So focus less on making them go viral, and more on getting the experience creating videos that add value.

Here are a few more considerations to help you harness the power of viral videos to build and promote your business.

Create how-to videos that showcase your expertise. This will serve as a free teaser to how you can help people.  And, if you do a good job, you will turn prospects who found your video useful into potential customers who are willing to purchase your products or services.

Create a blog post and turn it into a video. Use your blog posting basically as a script to create a short 1-2 minute video. Often, it’s easier for people to watch a short video than spend time reading a blog posting. If it’s on a topic people find relevant, useful, and is something they haven’t heard a million times, they will forward it on to their friends. At the end of the video, mention your website or how people can get more information about you or your services.

Remember, a key component is to tie in a very subtle outro scene to the end of the video that includes your company name and website. This will not only get your name out there, but it will send traffic back to your company website. If  it’s too blatant of a promo then it won’t get forwarded and thus won’t go viral.

In the world of Web 2.0, when there are countless tools you can use to promote your business for virtually no cost, it is imperative that you start exploring new ways to get your name out to targeted prospects. Creating videos is a good start. Don’t think you can’t do this because you don’t have the American Idol exposure. Think about your target market. Viral within your market might only need a few thousand views to have the same impact.

Take action today: Go create videos.

My next post will focus on how to leverage your YouTube channel to get targeted exposure for your videos.  In the meantime… How else have  you seen videos used to successfully promote your business?

By Thursday, the video went viral and now has more than 500,000 views on multiple accounts on YouTube.

His song is a trending topic on Twitter, his lyrics are on hundreds of Facebook statuses, and he is being interviewed by top T.V. and radio shows around the country. Even Brett Favre was caught doing his best Larry Platt impression. All of this came from the power of a viral video.

So, what is a viral video?  Here is a quick peek at the concepts of successful viral videos.

• Timely. If there is a trending topic in the news, people will be searching for information about it everywhere – including YouTube and other video sharing sites. For example, right now you could create a video that relates to the NFL Playoffs somehow and it would get more hits just because more people would be searching for that topic. Find a way to post a video that you can tie to a topic in the news.

• Relevant. If your video seems to speak straight to a particular audience, they will share it with their friends because they can relate to it. For example, one of our clients, Judson Laipply’s “Evolution of Dance” is one of the top viewed YouTube videos of all time.[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg[/youtube]By dancing to well-known songs from each decade beginning in the 1950s through today, he related to a wide range of audiences.  Another example is The Dove Real Beauty campaign, which resonated with women – daughters, mothers, and grandmothers – around the globe and became a successful viral campaign because it sent a positive message about the sensitive subject of the perception of beauty.

• Humorous, stupid or shocking. If a video instills a “haha” moment or a “wow” moment, people will not only watch it again and again themselves, but they will want to share it with others. Most of us have seen “Charlie Bit Me” where we can’t help but laugh at the two British brothers’ hilarious interaction. Or the video of Miss South Carolina bumbling through her answer at the Miss Teen USA pageant. Or when we watched in shock as the Pope was tackled by someone in the crowd at his Christmas mass. Make a video that steps outside the box and make people laugh or shocks them (either because it is outrageous or stupid) and your video will go viral.

• Celebrity figure. If a celebrity endorses something, creates a video, or does something that is caught on camera, people will watch. While getting a Hollywood celebrity to be in a short video for you might be near impossible, you can find celebrities in your particular field that can use their well-known names to get more hits on your video.

Viral videos play on the fact that we want to share the feeling we get from the video with others. If it’s funny, stupid or crazy we forward it to the people we think will appreciate it for being funny, stupid, or crazy.   Many of the most popular viral videos were never designed as promotional viral videos.

The key for you as a business owner or marketing professional is to tie in a very subtle outro scene to the end of the video that includes your website.   If it’s too blatant of a promo then it won’t get forwarded and thus won’t go viral.

Ideas are everywhere, but there are no guarantees that your video will go viral. Watch out for companies that say they can guarantee that your video will go viral because human behavior isn’t 100% predictable.  Using a firm like Prime Concepts or a few others that help produce online videos can help with concepts and production quality, but the results are measured in the marketplace.

In future posts we’ll explore how you can harness the power of this virtually free publicity for your business.  Until then….

What are your favorite viral videos and why?