How To Spread Your Brand New Viral Report

Okay. So you want an unstoppable stream of targeted quality traffic to promote your online business and you found a really great affiliate program that offers a free re-brandable viral report in form of a PDF document or an e-book, for promotional purposes.

You go through all the steps outlined by the owner of the affiliate program, re-branding your viral report with your name, your affiliate ID, web site URL, or whatever is allowed under the re-branding rights of the viral report.

And suddenly you realize this was the easy part and now, in order to get your viral report in front of as many people as possible, you have to go through the hassle of distributing the viral report containing your affiliate ID’s, web site links and so on.

Sadly, this is the part where most just simply give up. I admit the fact that I, my self, was in the same position a while ago. I mean, sure, I could promote it on a bunch of related forums, news groups, and bulletin boards, and if I get lucky some people will probably download it, read it, re-brand it and do the same thing I did: promote it!

But what does “promoting” really means? In my opinion it means having a viable strategy, a working distribution system that will ensure the perpetual advertising of the mentioned viral report.

And I don’t blame the end-user / promoter / affiliate. He’s just trying to make the damn report go viral. But how could he possibly succeed if he hasn’t had the proper tools to promote the viral report in the first place?

It’s the affiliate program owner’s job to make sure the affiliate has everything he needs to be able to successfully promote the report. And this includes coming up with new strategies on the table that include new ways and places to promote a viral report.

By the way, if you’re wondering by now, let me tell you that viral reports are still a great way to promote your business, build your list of potential customers, and are hotter than ever! It’s just that the old way of promoting them is kind of out of fashion, because it’s overdone by so many people that it’s become a virtual nightmare. Everybody has a free viral report promoting something somewhere, only if you could find it in your heart to input your first name and email address… (duh!)

My email address is full of such “promoters” and I keep asking myself: “Does it still work? It must be! Otherwise why would they do it?”.

Here’s what I would do if I’d had a viral report to promote. And I will only give you 3 (three) simple methods I use(d):

Step 1: First, I would go to niche related forums, like the Warrior Forum for an Internet Marketing related viral report. Forums are important because they are the blood-stream of your entire viral report operation!

Forum members are usually the first people who will read and act upon your viral report! And a pretty neat way to get more people to trust you and actually download, read and re-brand the viral report is to share these very tips on how to promote the e-book or PDF document.

You probably know that if you are trying to spam the hell out of the particular forum or news group or whatever, it won’t work. You have to participate in the discussions, share valuable information, find out what the problems are and find solutions. It’s a no-brainer really.

Step 2: I would go to Google and search for “giveaway events” and “list building events” and try to join as many as I could. Such events are simply created by one or several Internet Marketers usually, joining forces as a joint-venture partnership, creating such an event where everyone is free to join, to upload a free report and advertise it.

It’s a great way to start building your list. You know how everybody’s talking about “the money is in the list”. Try this out and you won’t have to worry again about “list building strategies”. Oops! Another great idea slipped out of my mouth. 

You can also search Facebook for such giveaway events. You will find a boat load of groups related to giveaways.

Step 3: Here’s where things would go crazy for me! I would share my viral report by uploading it to every PDF document hosting web site on the Internet! Sites like slideshare.net, docstoc.com, scribd.com or qualitypublisher.com are just a few of the many web sites that allow users to upload PDF files and then others can share them by copying the embedded code and pasting it on their web sites or blogs.

If the viral report has high value to the community, trust me if I say it will spread like crazy! To exemplify just do a search on Google for “Twitter 101” and see how many results you get for the same PDF document. The same thing I did with the “Twitter Brand Perception Survey“. (Check out the Page Rank of these sites! Pretty awesome!)

BONUS Step: Once I’m relaxed that my viral report campaign is successful, I would concentrate on the thing I love the most: social networking through social media! I would use the major social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and even Myspace, but also smaller players like Hi5 or Tagged. The same spam-free rule applies!

Well, there you have it! 3 Simple methods to promote your viral report! And if you think this is everything, you’re wrong. I have at least a dozen more ideas where these came from. But maybe in a future article or…  a re-brandable viral report

Tagged as: advertising, Affiliate Marketing, List Building, promoting, the money is in the list, Viral Marketing, viral reports