If your blog promotes your business or is your business, don’t hesitate to share it with other people.  Think of it as a limb of your business (or if the blog is your business, clearly it’s more important: it’s the heart). This will return dividends.

If you blog is your hobby, your interest, your passion – don’t hide it away. Otherwise you may as well make your posts in your personal diary

There are a lot of free ways that you can get your blog noticed. One of those ways is something that you can do everyday, easily, and that you may not even consider as a way to share your blog: put the link to your blog in your email signature – this is an example of viral marketing.

Viral marketing is about ‘buzz’ and brand awareness

One of the most amazing things about the Internet is that news, be it of a major political incident or the release of a new product, can travel the globe in minutes.

Something ‘goes viral’ when it is forwarded by email, or shared by whatever method (video file sharing, other file sharing, direct from a website) from one person to another, from that person to another person, and so on.

Viral marketing is one way in which a business can go stratospheric – from zero to hero.  If you have something which becomes the latest ‘craze’ (whether an iPhone App, a kids’ toy or a video clip) on the Internet, it can be an amazing opportunity to build a business, whether by piggy-backing sales onto it or using it to enhance brand awareness.

Success stories and practical application

To really understand the application of viral marketing and understand its impact, it’s helpful to look at situations where it has worked like a dream.

One of the most successful viral marketing campaigns of all time was based on using the email signature in just this way.  Hotmail grew and grew and grew as people used it, because every Hotmail email sent by every Hotmail user contained a signature inviting people to sign-up to Hotmail. Obvious, perhaps, but only when you think of it – just like most great ideas. Truly a beautiful thing from a business perspective.

You, too, can use this method today. And not only just in your email signature.  If you post comments on blogs, participate in forums online or submit stories to sites like Digg, then it does not cost you a penny to use the footer of your message (or whatever it might be) to promote your product, brand or whatever it might be.

Why?

The effect can be very powerful:  you’re indirectly ‘selling’ by sending people where you need them to be.  Often this is much, much better than the hard sell. People find themselves ‘pre-sold’ sometimes, depending on the topic (see above about pre-selling) – they are probably genuinely interested in what they’re seeing if they click on a well-worded link in a viral context.

It’s likely that you send out emails more times that you can count during the day. Each time you send out an email, you can advertise your blog by putting the address of your blog in your email’s signature.

The message

Naturally, you should always write something catchy and interesting.  Life’s a rich tapestry and your business life should reflect that.  Draw the eyes to your post with impact copywriting and great ‘headlines’.  These should be short but direct.  You want people to be interested enough to want to click on it, but you also don’t want to scare them off.

As with any advertisement, you want to give the reader just enough to be interested and take a closer look at what it is that you are writing about.

Think about what it is that your blog is about. What is really going to interest people about it and want (no, let’s say need) to visit. That is what you should include in your signature, and that is what is going to get people to go to your blog.

Don’t forget to use existing blog resources as those are the guys who have done it and are doing it. You can find some excellent ones, here.

We’re only scratching the surface, here. But scratching the surface of a really, really key topic if you want traffic. In terms of wider ‘tools’, we have already written about social networking and social media to “buzz your blog” and will be doing so again, soon.