Inside the search marketing world, I still see many folks struggling to grasp the concept behind viral marketing, particularly when it comes to moving beyond the basic top 10 lists and iPhone helps destroy evil RIAA posts. So, I thought it would be valuable to take a look at some solid examples of well-thought-out, niche-relevant content that nails the viral marketing concept.
Let’s start with Indeed.com’s Job Trends search function:
The interface is smooth, seemless and fast. The data is hard to verify, but certainly fascinating to chart and eminently quotable. They’ve also done an excellent job of branding themselves with their logo behind the image and a free license to reproduce with a request for links back to Indeed.com. Now all they need to do is show a chart where Digg is going up and Microsoft is going down and submit it to the former 🙂
Next up is a link I came across via Sphinn (yes, it’s already influencing the linkerati). This is a data-fetching tool for webpages that’s now been freely licensed since the original developer could no longer support the bandwidth.
You can get data about SEO, popularity, IP information, blog subscribers, link data and more. The interface is fairly solid, too, despite the scrolling list formats and it appeals to the most link-likely part of every blogger – the ego. Someone’s already made a working version at XinuReturns.com.
Last up is the Compete.com blog, which constantly advertises on Techmeme, but had a surefire hit this week with their release of click data to political campaign websites.
It’s timely, informative and even looks like it matches up well with mainstream polling data (with the obvious lefty-slant thanks to the online demographic). Their biggest mistake? Not including Ron Paul in with the Republican data initially and then showing his somewhat lackluster numbers. Good linkbaiters know that the summer of 2007 is the summer of Ron Paul on the web – if you want traffic and links, say nice things about that guy 🙂
Now I’d love to open up the floor – if you’ve got examples of well-architected viral content to share, please do!
