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Matt Cutts

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Social Media Is All About Winning The Viral Race!

When will you say that a social media campaign is successful?

The success of a social media campaign is defined based on one major factor, i.e. "visibility".

"If you can think and construct a unique, interesting theme to market your product or service, the end result will be a successful campaign."

I have taken couple of social media virals to explain how unique and interesting your campaign should be.

Campaign from OldSpic:


This is one of the successful viral video campaigns which attracted so many social media users.

Campaign from Cisco:


Copycat of OldSpice, which is a failure and couldn’t generate enough buzz among the social media users.

Reason for Cisco's failure:

The main reason for Cisco's failure is the idea is not unique and moreover a social viral will not fit for all kinds of products and services. In this case you can’t use the same technique to sell both after-shave and networking routers

Few tips for a successful social media campaign:

1. Think unique

Copying an existing social media campaign will create another “Cisco Spice”, so think unique.

2. Consider your target audience

A brief research about your audience like, age group, gender and the geo location can help you create a campaign for your target audience

3. Interesting campaign topic, character and theme

Selecting an attractive character, name or theme is very crucial as this the entry point where it hooks the users to stop and view the viral.

4. Refresh (be active)

Any social media camping has its own expiry date; you can’t just create a campaign and expect users glued with your service always. If you don’t refresh your ideas users will keep moving.

As you can see the graph below, traffic reached the peak when Oldspice released their viral, then it become normal. Be active to keep yourself on top.


Finally, think viral! If you want to win the social media race, think and act viral.

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