Do you have an area of expertise? If so, then your expertise could be used to to bring traffic to your web site, not in an overnight rush, but over a sustained period of time.

The online world is hungry for information. There are many web site owners, particularly in the blogging world, who are keen to publish that information. Their problem is not having the time, expertise or money or either create or buy the material needed on their sites.Your expertise could fill the gap and add to your viral marketing strategies.

Consider writing quality articles and then submitting them to some of the article sites. Publishers often come searching for good articles and with luck they will publish yours along with your bio and links to your site. If visitors read your article and like what they see, they are likely to click on the link and visit your site for more of the same - the viral marketing has begun.

To be successful at article writing, you need to consider the following when writing each article:

• The Title: Attention grabbing titles are important particularly if they suggest that the articles contents may help solve a problem - for example: “How to ….”; “When to…..” or number solutions such as “10 tips to…” or “top 10….”.
• Introduction: Your first paragraph needs to justify the title and provide enough reason to continue reading the article. If it is a ‘how to’ article, outline the problem in fairly simple terms.
• Body: Solve the problem; discuss the issues. This is where you win the reader. You have lured them in with a good title and opening paragraph, now you have to satisfy the reader. Fail to do that and they will not return. This is where reader trust is developed.
• Conclusion: Wrap everything up with a conclusion. The conclusion should sum up the contents and reinforce or answer the title.
• Resource Box: This is where you sell yourself. Place a link to your web pages here. You can also put in a small bio about yourself, particularly if you have qualifications or experience worth selling

Don’t sell yourself in the article itself. The article needs to be on topic. What about keywords you ask? By all means use them but they should not dominate the article. The content is the most important thing to concentrate on. Effective use of keywords will make your article valuable to someone who wants to publish it. Overkill, and whilst it may get published, no one will follow the links to your site - the easiest way to kill a viral marketing campaign.

Finally, having published your article, include a link on your site to your pages with article submission site. When ever you are socializing in any of the social networks, particularly forums, don’t be afraid to mention the article when appropriate. If you have a written a ‘how to’ article and someone talks about the same problem, point them to the article.

As you not pointing them to your own site, your credibility will rise. When it comes social marketing, your reputation and the credibility associated with it is of the utmost importance. That credibility is what will help to drive a viral marketing strategy.

7 Tips To Achieve Viral Marketing With Your Blog:

1. Define exactly who your market is and what they want more than anything. In every market, there is certain information people search for and have a very difficult time finding it. Which makes it very valuable to them. Don’t assume you know what that information is. Find the real people and ask them what they want. Ask them what they search for and just can’t find. Then give it to them.
2. Technorati ranks blog posts by how many inbound links they get. It’s a great viral marketing indicator for you of what information people are most desperately looking for. Search Technorati to see who are the real “power bloggers” in your niche and which of their posts generate the most comments. What do the visitors say?
3. Keep a record of these really popular posts so you can link to them in your own social blogging, giving you the chance to get traffic from trackbacks. And with each of these popular posts, consider how you might effectively take the exact opposite position in your own article. Controversy can be a viral marketing reader-magnet.
4. Schedule ahead and stick to your schedule. Which days will you post? Your readers will be more comfortable and predictable when you have them on a schedule. Get articles ready in advance, so you eventually are 3 or 4 weeks ahead. If something major comes up, you can write about it and insert it immediately, and move back the other lined-up posts. If you don’t stick to a set schedule, you will discourage your readers.
5. Tell your story in your “About Me” page. Display a photo. Engage your reader. Write your bio so she can see that you and she are kindred spirits.
6. Set up a constant stream of resources on Google News or on your RSS feed, so you have a lot of ideas to choose from. Grab the best ones and react to them in writing. Come from a different angle. You want your readers to see you as one-of-a-kind, a viewpoint they just can’t get anywhere else in social blogging.
7. As you look over the new daily idea feeds you’ve set up, consider how to use them to frame a resource list or list of “how-to” tips. These are your best bet to be a viral marketing hit with readers.

The more of these proven, tested elements that you consistently combine in your blog articles, the better your chance of creating a viral marketing boost to your business.

You find so many social networks these days that give you viral social marketing opportunities. How do you take advantage? How do you go viral? It’s the eternal marketing question. What can you do that will make people laugh at your YouTube video and say, “Holy mackeral! THIS is incredible! I have to email THIS to everyone.”

Add to the mix the fact that all your competition wants to do exactly the same thing - before you do - and the whole puzzle gets stickier.

First, you need a viral social marketing model. Recently, an incredible photo made the rounds through email. It showed a naked man on a hospital gurney, attendants standing around. What made this man’s photo remarkable was the telephone pole sticking out of his butt. It had been been sawed off, so it was only about 3 feet long, and it looked to be about 8-10 inches in diameter. The article with it said he had been thrown from his boat while bass fishing. You can picture the rest. He survived, but had some serious soft tissue damage. Oh, man. I’ll bet he did!

So think of the TV show “America’s Funniest Videos.” People send in their home videos of friends and relatives doing really stupid things, which often lead to incredible pain … which causes the audience to laugh like crazy. And that is exactly the effect you want to create (the laughter - not the pain), so the clips on this show may be a great model for your own viral marketing campaign.

What if your business is … say … accounting? Or anything else perceived by the public as totally boring? How can you possibly go viral?

How about THIS YouTube video: “The Death-Defying Adventures of Accountant-Man!”

1. Accountant-Man, dressed in superhero garb, sits at a desk. A dog comes up and lifts its leg, peeing on Accountant-Man’s foot.
2. Accountant-Man, smiling and all full of himself, tosses a baseball to his small child. The child hits a line drive right into Accountant-Man’s … (you’ve seen this before, right?). And Accountant-Man doubles over and drops to the ground in agonizing pain.
3. Accountant-Man rides his bicycle. You yell, “Hey, Accountant-Man! Are you on your way to save another victim of bad arithmetic?” And Accountant-Man looks at you and nods vigorously and raises his hands in triumph … and crashes into a tree, getting thrown off his bike.

If you’ve ever watched “America’s Funniest Videos,” you’ve already seen these clips, and a lot of others like them. People do dumb things, they get hurt, and the audience cracks up. At home, you take it viral. You call your family into the room. “Watch THIS! This is incredible!”

So next time you watch this show, take notes. What you have here is a perfect viral marketing model for any business or product or service, no matter how essentially boring it may be.

BlogCatalog.com, the social blog directory, is putting the finishing touches on a new tool that will, on a single page, automatically cross-network and promote to your friends - and maybe their friends - all your social networking interests. Result? A realistic chance to go viral every time you Digg a new blog article or post a video to YouTube.

BlogCatalog’s new dashboard will be like the ultimate social network RSS feed. You will instantly get the social networking activities of all your friends … and they will get yours.

The new social blogging dashboard automatically:

• Displays your latest activities across social networks like Digg, Flickr, Last.fm, Twitter, YouTube, and many others.
• Posts your profile updates, Digg submissions, Twitter comments, etc., right to your friends’ Dashboard - and maybe their friends, also, giving you a headstart on viral marketing.
• Energizes your profile page, causing other bloggers to return again and again.
• Streamlines your social networking, so you accomplish much more in much less time.

This viral social marketing tool was conceived to be the “dream team” of social blogging time-savers, taken from the wishlist of some of the top bloggers online. We’ll report on it again, as soon as it goes live.

1. Brainstorm with your customers or friends. Tell them you want a video that goes viral on YouTube to promote your business. Ask what they’d do that both promotes your business and would rivet people’s attention. Offer a prize or reward for anyone who submits a video that promotes you, and a bigger prize for the best video submitted. Let them know you’ll post their video to YouTube, giving them full credit.

2. When you do your own video, show your personality. Nobody expects - or wants - a Spielberg production. The purpose is to create a strong bond between you and your audience (or prospects). So as you make your point in the video, be 100% sincere AND show your personality. Do a Google search for “videos that have gone viral” or “popular videos”, etc., and watch them. Those are perfect models. What does that person onscreen do that especially endears them to you? How do they capture your attention? How do they get you excited? What do they do that arouses your curiousity, makes you keep watching? How do they astonish you? Make notes.

3. Attention spans are short. Make your point and get out. Videos that go viral are almost always pretty short - under 2 minutes, for greatest effect. If you have a lot to say, break it up into a video series - all under 2 minutes.

4. If you want your viewer to do something (e.g., go to some url), use Windows Movie Maker (in your Program Files; it came with your system) or other editing software to put that instruction in writing on the screen in the last few seconds of your video. Movie Maker also gives you special effects you can choose from, but keep it very simple. If you get carried away creating effects, you’ll wind up with a mess that nobody will watch.

5. Write down a dozen or more possible titles. This is a critical step. A great title gets you a lot of viewers. A bad title (anything less than great), and you’re dead in the water. You want your title short, punchy, to-the-point. If you can hit their curiousity, great. Don’t try to be clever - most “clever” titles just sound dopey and turn people off. Search online for “free headline swipe file” to give you models for your titles.

6. Upload your video and start planning your next one. You need practice and experience to get really good at this. And you’ll probably need to post several videos on YouTube before you get much of an audience. Meanwhile, include a link to your videos in every piece of promotion you send out. Always encourage people to go to YouTube, watch your videos, and give you feedback.

7. Make a list of bloggers who are read by your target market. Send them a short description with a link to your video. This is another reason you need a REALLY good title! If the right bloggers promote your video, then you have a real chance of that viral effect.

Repeat Steps 1 through 7 again and again. Watch your stats closely to see what works and what doesn’t. You’ll get better every time, and you’ll have a better chance of creating that viral video.

A viral marketing tool that isn’t mentioned to often is a browser toolbar. You’ve likely seen several browser toolbars on the market, and likely use a few. Some of the more popular toolbars include:

• Google Toolbar
• Yahoo Toolbar
• MSN Live Toolbar
• Alexa Toolbar
• Firefox Toolbar
• StumbleUpon Toolbar

These toolbars serve a useful purpose, particularly for the users of these various services. Why not create your own toolbar to the interests of your market?

You can create your own toolbar using a service called Conduit. Conduit allows you to create your own community toolbar and include customized features that are appropriate to your target market. It also tracks usage of the tool so that you can see how your users are using the toolbar. You can communicate directly with your toolbar community through the toolbar and it includes some other great features as well, such as:

• Customize search engine powered by Google
• Web radio
• RSS feed subscriptions
• Check your e-mail from the toolbar
• Privacy features that allow you to erase cookies and clear cache and history at the click of a button
• Install gadgets
• Plus, you can create your own gadgets to include in the toolbar

The Conduit toolbar creator is brandable so you can upload your company logo and name your toolbar with your company brand. It is also set for monetization so you can use it as a source of revenue. All in all, the Conduit toolbar creator is a good tool for viral marketing and has a lot of potential to take your business to the next level.

Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins, one of the chief writers at Mashable, laments the lack of advertisers in podcasting. Does that mean podcasting isn’t a viable business model?

I don’t think so. It may be difficult to get advertisers, or sponsors, for your podcasts, but I don’t think it’s impossible. Even if you can’t profit from the advertising, you can turn your podcasts into a marketing vehicle. Contrary to popular opinion, viral video marketing hasn’t killed podcasting. It’s just one more medium and you can use it to effectively market your business. Here are some ideas to help you understand how podcasting can be used as a marketing tool:

• Produce a weekly podcast radio show that covers important changes in your industry.
• Make an instructional podcast as a free download for your customers. This won’t work for every business. But it could work for yours. This will work well if you have a good voice for audio, you are not photogenic or amenable to video marketing, or your topic doesn’t fit in well with the video visual presentation format.
• Interview someone in your field who is prominent and has a name. If you find the right person to interview, you might be able to find a sponsor for the podcast who will pay you just for your time. Or you can share the podcast with others in your industry and allow them to download, distribute or use your podcasts any way they like as long as they give you attribution.

There are any number of ways you can use podcasting, but the most powerful seems to be as a free distribution vehicle for your audio content. Advertisers or no advertisers, if you can get new targeted traffic to your website using podcasts then why wouldn’t you?