Author: Daryl Campbell

In the b.i. days (before the internet), the success of a mom and pop store depended, among other things, on the big boys of industry. Once they came to town and set up shop, there was no more mom and pop. They were driven out of business by the sheer volume of the mega companies' advertising and capital. Not a pretty site.

The internet has gone a long way to reviving the mom and pop industry. It affords many small businesses the opportunity to compete by using simple cost effective techniques repeated on a continuous basis. One of the techniques is viral marketing commonly referred to as word of mouth.

In the old days viral marketing for small business owners had limited appeal. Yes they could be successful in that particular city, town or even region but it's still nothing compared to the global word of mouth that business owners can tap into right now thanks to the internet. Once you launch your viral marketing campaign, it requires very little follow up on your part and even this has been taken a step further with the emergence of Web 2.0.

Here are some new ways to get the best out of your viral marketing:

1. The Small Report.
There have been some excellent ebooks on the internet chock full of good information but let's face it: many people are not going to read them due to the length. Enter the small report. Putting together a five to ten page report can be done in no time. The same goes for reading it. We suffer from information overload in this day and age so giving people useful information in smaller quantities makes sense.

Find a hot topic and write several articles on it. Place the articles in a pdf file with your name and contact information branded on the report. Tell readers they are free to distribute your report as long as they do not alter it in any way. Then advertise your report in forums on your website and anywhere else you can think of. People want information fast and utilizing small reports is a good way to give them exactly that. It's also a good start to making money from your viral campaign.

2. Video
In 2005, Kevin McCarthy one of the pioneers of online marketing predicted that within a year there would be an explosion of online video. Prediction accomplished. The internet is at the dawning of the video revolution. It is becoming easier and easier to make a video and upload it to places like You Tube or Google Video. In fact Google bought You Tube late last year for 1.65 billion dollars. That's a good indicator of how things are going.

Like the small report, try to keep your video brief and to the point. While people would rather watch than read, you still don't want to overload them. The point of a using a viral video (like reports) for your business is to give visitors useful information but just enough. In the end you want them to get more information by going to your website

3. Folksonomies
Wikipedia defines folksonomy as "a user-generated taxonomy used to categorize and retrieve web content such as Web pages, photographs and Web links". In plain english what they are referring to is tagging; a way to not only retrieve information you want but more importantly to share that information with others. Tagging is nothing more than keywords specifically related to bookmarking social sites like Digg, Technorati or Delicious.

As an example let's say you join Technorati. You then make a video, tag it with the keyword phrase "funny online video" and upload it to your account. Now all individuals within the Technorati community will be able to access your video when they type in that particular keyword. This is very powerful. Tag viral and bookmarking social can put you in front of a large audience immediately.

No matter how new the strategies keep in mind if you want your viral marketing to truly take off then make sure its free. Charging money for your report or video will guarantee you a limited appeal. Free is a powerful psychological trigger for many of us so use it. Also make sure you are providing quality. No one is going to be in a hurry to pass around below average information.

Author: Erlin Monrouzeau

Are you tired of chasing and harassing people all over the place about your multilevel marketing business and products? That was me! I was frustrated and about to quit! Was it me? I did not understand. People were not even taken my phone calls anymore! How about you? Then, I learned I was missing the two most important skills needed in network marketing. I believe, you are going to be surprised when you find out why you are not getting ahead in your business.

Did you know that 97% of people fail in their mlm business? And I was about to be part of that group.

Like me you were probably taught that to be successful in network marketing business, all you needed to do was to talk to your friends, family and everybody in between, find out their why, read motivational books, listen to CDs, go to every event and share the opportunity and products. And if people asked you, what it was you were to say is about word of mouth advertising. That is it.

I did everything I was taught and no results to show for all that effort. It was not working for me. I felt something was missing. After reading and searching, I found out that I was lacking two important skills in multilevel marketing. Ironically, they are sales and marketing. What a discovery!!!

First, I learned that successful businesspeople in any field know that talking about their products and/or services is selling; and marketing can bring qualified buyers and the sales process is to close the deal and build relationship with them. Not sharing or word of mouth advertising. That is what customers do. Second, I learned that selling applies to everything we do and marketing is just selling in print or whatever media you like to use to promote your business and products. That is what business owners do!

That is when it hit me. I was a business owner not a customer. I found that the quality of customers who find me is completely different from the ones that I found that is why I chased or harassed them. This was Breaking News to me. I do not know why our uplines do not teach these concepts. They do not even mention them. Can it be the case of the blind leading the blind in hopes that somebody sticks?

The bad news is that this is why 97% of mlmers fail in Network Marketing. We are taught how wonderful our companies and our products are and to just go out there and present to everybody that breath, whether they want it or not.

We need to realized that change is inevitable and doing things like in the 80's or 90's do not work in the 21st Century. Sales and Marketing are the most important skills, we, as business owners, need to have or develop these skills in order to be successful in our multilevel marketing businesses.