Lighting a Viral Fire
Not long ago, Saturday Night Live hired a couple of talented young web writers and comics as part of their cast. These guys decided that SNL needed Digital Shorts. The first big SNL digital short Lazy Sunday, which went viral. Lazy Sunday was viewed over 5 million times on YouTube before NBC had it taken down for copyright infringement. However, NBC saw the potential in this and started posting future digital shorts on their own site and on iTunes. NBC followed up the success of the SNL digital shorts with digital shorts available online for The Office and online comic books for Heroes.That’s going viral and using it to your marketing advantage.
The Lazy Sunday explosion was the first time a lot of folks had even heard the term "viral" used as something other than a contagious infection. Yet, that’s exactly what it is. Something that is viral spreads from person to person – in this case, it spreads via the Internet and the use of media-rich Web 2.0 sites.
So, how do you create something that will go viral? GrapeThinking is an excellent blog on internet marketing and wine, although many of the posts can be applied across business lines – not just wine. Russ has posted a great article on the steps for creating something viral. Using the analogy of creating and stoking the flames of a fire, he takes you from lighting the match to adding gasoline. His point is that viral is easy. It just takes a little creativity and use of things freely available to you, such as Digg, Technorati, Friends (your own and sites that let you find new ones), and basic linking. Web 2.0 is about community. Folks, communities spread news like, well, wildfire. Isn’t it time you took your own message viral?
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viral, 
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Lazy Sunday, 
digital shorts
