Have you heard of Facebook?
By now, you are probably familiar with the popular social networking website called Facebook.
According to Wikipedia, Facebook has more than 19 million registered users in 47,000 regional networks, related to work, universities or high schools.
He was skeptical at first
Initially, I was very reluctant to embrace the Facebook phenomenon. However, my friends kept asking me “Hey Vincent, are you on Facebook?”…”Have you joined Facebook yet?” “You need to visit Facebook.” This went on for weeks.
Surprisingly, when I checked my Hotmail account, I also received invitations from dozens of friends, including Andre, David, Trisha, Renee, and Kevin.
How did Facebook get so popular, so fast?
Finally, I decided to visit this website called Facebook. Once and for all, I wanted to find out why Facebook is so popular. I wanted to know how they managed to gain millions of members in a few months. How did they get so big, so fast? I had to know the truth. I wanted to know his secret!
Facebook secret exposed
In addition to having an easy-to-navigate layout, the ability to control friends, great content, and amazing search capabilities, Facebook is using one of the most powerful viral marketing strategies ever devised.
It is so simple, yet extremely powerful.
Once my account was created, I immediately clicked on the friends tab. I noticed a drop down menu with several options including Invite friends. Once I clicked, I was taken to a page that allowed me to import email addresses from my Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, and Gmail.
I was also greeted with the following message:
“Enter your email login information below and Facebook will securely import your contacts from
your address book.”
I simply inserted my email address and password and instantly all 78 of my Hotmail contacts appeared before me. With a click of a button, I was able to invite all my contacts to join Facebook.
I quickly realized the power of this app. After using this tool to instantly invite my 78 Hotmail contacts; I quickly realized the power of this app! What impressed me the most was how simple it was to import and invite all my contacts. Unlike traditional invite-a-friend forms, it only took seconds to invite 78 people using Facebook’s PHP Address Book Importer.
By implementing this viral marketing strategy, Facebook has become one of the most popular websites online.
5 Reasons Why Traditional Invite-a-Friend Forms Are Obsolete!
- They forced their visitors to manually enter email addresses.
- Your visitors must also manually type the name next to each email address.
- Most forms only have about 10 input fields. Remember, the average person has more than 100 webmail contacts. Why limit yourself?
- People are lazy. No one wants to sit down and insert dozens of email addresses into their form!
- Ongoing subscription fees.
Once you make the decision to upgrade to a PHP address book importer. You will need to implement a variety of marketing strategies to maximize your success. In other words, simply installing such a script is NOT enough.
3 Viral Marketing Strategies You MUST Do To EXPLODE Your Business Online
Strategy #1: Motivate your visitors!
Let’s be realistic. We live in a very selfish world. I’m sure you have a fabulous website. However, no one is going to tell their friends without asking the following question What’s in there for me? You’ll be surprised what people will do if you provide the right incentive! Offering free gifts is a good place to start.
Strategy #2: Don’t hide your Invite a Friend link
Hiding your link is a big mistake. This is very frustrating for me. Most webmasters will place their refer-a-friend link at the bottom of their web page. They put it somewhere remote on their website and wonder why no one is using it.
You must add your link to invite a friend to the main navigation of your website. For example, most websites will have “About us” “Contact Us” “products” added to main navigation. Your invite-a-friend link should also be added to the primary navigation from your website.
Strategy #3: It’s all in the name
Here’s an idea. Instead of using the same old boring “tell a friend” link title why not say “Free Ipod”, “Free Coupon”, “Free eBook”? This will make your visitors click on the link. At that time, you can provide contest details/instructions.
Viral marketing is not a fad or a gimmick. It is a true marketing strategy that can increase the profitability of your business. Adding a PHP address book importer to your arsenal will instantly give your visitors an easy way to invite others to your website.
Facebook is already using the new technology, shouldn’t you?
