You hear the term viral all the time.

I’m regularly reading Internet content that has “gone viral” or watching the latest viral video post. I research virality, and I read articles about content virality.

Virality is a big deal. If you think about it, viral content is what shapes our culture.

The idea of viral content has become rooted in Internet culture. It’s obviously something that most bloggers and marketers strive to achieve with their content.

Viral content can come in many forms and mean different things to different people.

For example, by some standards, I’ve written several “viral” articles—articles that were viewed by millions and shared by thousands. But when I compare my little blog article to other viral pieces of content, I see that its reach is tiny.

The underlying quality of a viral piece of content is that it circulates rapidly across the Internet and reaches a widespread audience in a short period of time.

It can go from obscurity to mass exposure overnight.

Whether it’s a meme, video, blog post, or commercial, viral content has a way of capturing the attention of people from all walks of life.

There’s something exceptional about it even if you can’t necessarily put your finger on it.

Although there’s no magical recipe that instantly makes a blog article epic and uber-sharable, there is certainly a formula you can follow to achieve virality. After all, virality is a scientific phenomenon, even if achieving insane levels, like 2.5 billion views, isn’t predictable.

You can engineer virality to a certain degree. You start by understanding a few factors and elements that unite viral content.

Here’s a sequence you can follow to engineer the perfect viral blog article.  [click to continue…]

When I write content, I’m usually not that funny. My written jokes don’t go over too well, so I stick with solid, meaty stuff that helps my readers solve problems and achieve marketing goals.

But I know humor is important.

Some of you reading this article are funny people. You have a knack for creating content that makes people laugh.

I’m here to tell you that’s awesome. Humor is a powerful tool.

Have you noticed that more and more brands are incorporating humor into their marketing these days?

Old Spice, Geico, and Dollar Shave Club are just a few companies that come to mind.

Well, there’s a good reason for this trend. Humor sells. That’s why I applaud you if you’re able to insert humor into your content.

In many cases, making your audience laugh is the key to winning them over, boosting your brand equity, and creating the perception of authenticity.

There’s even hard data showing the appeal humor can have.

Nielsen conducted extensive research on which marketing themes resonate the most with a global audience.

Here’s a breakdown of how advertising appeal differs around the world.

As you can see, the European and North American audiences respond most favorably to humor at 51% and 50% respectively.

So, at least theoretically, throwing humor into your campaign should help you win over half of your audience.

If you do it right, you can use humor to propel your marketing and branding to epic heights.  [click to continue…]

As a marketer, you know how important it is to create a connection with your audience.

It’s essential for slashing through the barriers that divide us, for establishing a unique brand identity, and for building trust.

There have been times I’ve been successful in doing so. But at other times, I’ve fallen flat.

It’s getting easier than ever to create a unique connection because we now have the technological tools to do so.

One of the best tools enabling you to do this is Facebook Live, which “lets people, public figures and Pages share live video with their followers and friends on Facebook.”

The concept is simple. You record a live video your audience can watch in real time and respond to by commenting.

Facebook Live provides the perfect framework for connecting, and its personable nature is ideal for facilitating interaction.

In fact, initial data has found that people comment over 10 times more on Facebook Live videos than on regular videos.

But how can you ensure your videos are engaging?

Here are some tips that should point you in the right direction.  [click to continue…]

Link building. It’s the backbone of SEO.

The way we build links has changed quite a lot over the past decade, but links themselves are no less valuable.

Like me, you may remember the early days of online marketing, when generating backlinks to a website was as simple as requesting links from link farms and other sketchy sources.

Google put a stop to that, so generating backlinks for a brand-new website is a bit trickier these days.

That doesn’t mean that it’s impossible, though. The sooner your site has a decent number of backlinks from authoritative, high-quality websites, the sooner its performance on the major search engines will improve.

Although this is largely a waiting game, there are things you can do right now to generate first-rate backlinks to your new site.

Follow the advice here, and you can easily generate upwards of 100 authoritative and relevant backlinks to your new site in just 30 days.   [click to continue…]

Your website’s contact form may seem like the most mundane element of your site, but every marketer should pay attention to it.

In the past, I didn’t give contact forms much attention. It was a sub-secondary didn’t-care-about-it page when I had a lot more to worry about.

Then, I ran some tests on removing a single form field and found this one change boosted my conversions by 26%.

A 26% lift may not seem impressive to some, but from an annual perspective, that one change grew revenue well into six figures.

If you know anything about me, you know I’m obsessed with split testing. I kept testing, kept tweaking, and kept optimizing my contact page. With every test, I learned some new lessons.

Here’s my big takeaway: Getting people to contact you is valuable. Making it easy for them to contact you is even better.

Why? Because these are warm leads.

Anything you do to move qualified leads into your funnel is a smart move.

How do you turn your boring ol’ contact page into a massive lead magnet?

Let me give you the perspective-setting intro, then we’ll dive into some tricks.  [click to continue…]