More and more webmasters have the recurring dilemma on how to increase the flow of traffic in the websites. During the past few years many methods have been developed to solve this predicament. Over the years marketing has meant so many different things; and there have been so many different ways to do it. One of the methods that has spawned many success stories in driving traffic into websites is viral marketing. Viral marketing makes use of the tendency of a person to share something that they find informative, entertaining or amazing.
Many companies bank on this behavior to spread their products and increase the popularity of their company or their website. I am sure that you follow several company Facebook pages, or Twitter/Instagram accounts. However this practice has actually been around for longer than you think. In fact, they have been doing this for years. Way before the term viral marketing ever really picked up any speed. I remember utilizing a tell-a-friend module on an old phpNuke website that I worked on, Oh about 9 years ago. In-fact phpNuke comes with a Tell-a-Friend module which they call Recommend Us to this very day.
One of the easiest methods of viral marketing has always been the use of a tell-a-friend script or plugin. These days it is a simple addon that you can attach to the any of your websites. Generally, tell a friends script are installed within pages where some interesting media or a story is placed so that a person can easily share that content with any of their friends or their family members. The basic concept of a tell-a-friend script is to allow someone to share the content of your website among their friends. As the recipient receives the e-mail or share notification they don’t think of it as spam because they see the sender’s name as someone he or she knows and trust.
Tell a friend scripts greatly eliminate the chances of being blocked or marked as spam because they use the information inputted by the sender. This allows for your content to have the potential of a much wider audience reach. Whenever your content is shared – you have the potential of generating a new lead, a new sale, or simply a new loyal visitor to your website. Then the process begins again. As more people use the tell-a-friend script, more and more people find out about your website, or your shared media.
Now I know that some of you will say that this is all rather old-school; however the reason this is still being used is because it works. You might also argue that this method will not bring in the same traffic you might receive from a large social network – and that is true – however a tell-a-friend script is not meant to replace your social marketing but enhance it. In-fact companies such as AddThis and ShareThis feature a built in email tell-a-friend script within all of their buttons.
If you aren’t already utilizing some way to allow your website visitors to share your content via email, I have collected several remotely hosted Tell-A-Friend scripts and listed them within the Rapid Purple Webmaster Resources Directory. Happy marketing!