Viral distribution matters most

Posted on December 9, 2007
Filed Under Online business, Websites, online advertising |

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Recently an influential business investor who has been in the information technology (IT) industry for decades said something that got me thinking. He said that in today’s IT world, the success of an IT company is not to just focus on the technology but to focus on distribution. He was referring to IT storage technology. I said to myself this also holds true for internet businesses. Whether it is e-commerce, blogs, video sharing, forums, software, etc., viral distribution is crucial to the success of the business. Your online target audience will not know about your online business unless you find a way to reach them through some form of online distribution channel.

There are two phases in any online business. Firstly you must get yourself recognized in cyber-world. Then when people recognize your business, you must convert them from visitors to fans. Hence, find a way to get them to stick around. Only then will you be able to get repeated sales and form a relationship with your customers.

The first phase - Getting recognized
Search Engine Optimizers (SEO) are specialists in distributing your business URL to online communities, search engines, directories, etc. They do the “Shout Out” distribution for you. They also optimize your site through keyword strategies to get your site seen up in the list of search engines results.

Then there is reciprocal link distribution where back links to your web site will push up your page rank. A page rank tells others how popular your site is. This is measured by the number of links back to your site. Online advertising is another getting recognized strategy used by almost all online businesses. You can advertise through Google’s Adwords, Yahoo or other online advertising companies, i.e. AdBrite, etc. Some companies are using game distribution channels to advertise their products using in-game advertising methods or social network distribution channels, i.e. Facebook, MySpace, etc. to advertise or “Shout Out”.

The second phase - Sticky fans
Once you are recognized online, the number of visitors coming to your web site will increase and you have to think of ways to keep them coming back. Hence, converting visitors to fans. If you have an e-commerce web site, you need a good shipping and supplier distribution. If you run a blog or forum, you have to provide good content. You have to build a good team of contributors and moderators. You may also want to keep in touch with your fans through email-outs regularly to remind them of your existence and to inform them of new content, products, etc.

This is on-going because fans that do not stick around will go elsewhere and become fans of competitor web sites. Nothing is set in stone. The online business is always open to new ideas for example in recent months, companies are creating API’s for developers to create sticky applications for their web sites, particularly social networks. Ideas for creating viral distribution is key because we already have a good internet technology infrastructure. It is how and what we add-on to the existing technology that will give online businesses the extra edge in the business.

Having said that, if you are looking for ways to get recognized, check out my reciprocal link exchange web site and start creating back links to your web site.

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One Response to “Viral distribution matters most”

Search Engine Optimization Direct » Blog Archive » Viral distribution matters most on January 7th, 2008 8:14 am

[...] Angela Rittig article is brought to you using rss feeds.Here are some of the top articles on search engine optimization.Search Engine Optimizers (SEO) are specialists in distributing your business URL to online communities, search engines, directories, etc. They do the “Shout Out” distribution for you. They also optimize your site through keyword … [...]

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