Imagine having the opportunity to reach an audience of 500 million people. This is the number of active users on Facebook and the number of people using this social network continues to grow daily. 50% of these users are logged in at any given time and most spend an average of 60 minutes on the website every day. These figures make Facebook a formidable marketing tool.

Leading search engine, Google, has added the use of social content as a criteria for ranking web pages. If you are in marketing or simply want to share a message with an online audience, then adding a Facebook link is one of the surest means of reaching a larger audience.
Of the various tools available on the social networking website, fan pages and groups are the most common method of free marketing. Groups are popular amongst those interested in viral marketing i.e. those people who would like to send bulk invites and therefore reach a large target audience in a short period. Groups allow for members to discuss products and services and are a good method of attracting short term attention.
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Part 1 of our 21 part Series on Viral Traffic Generation.

Viral Traffic Generation – What is it anyway?

Viral marketing has become an increasingly discussed subject in the past few years. Many bloggers and webmasters are forever discussing the value of this technique to drive large amounts of traffic to your website. So, you may be asking yourself; “What is Viral Marketing and how can it help me?” Is it a proven technique which works effectively or just another passing blackhat fad?

In its simplest form, Viral Marketing is a technique which gets others to willing talk about and spread your information for you. People read your information or hear about your latest offering and begin to tell others. The message begins to spread from person to person in this manner like a “virus”. When this occurs, it is referred to as” Going Viral”.

This type of marketing relies mainly on word-of-mouth techniques. Someone sees your information and passes it on to another who does the same. That person tells a few of their friends who tell a few of their friends and so the cycle continues As this goes on, the number of people who hear about your information increases rapidly. The more individuals who read about your information or product, the more traffic you receive.
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Those just starting to use email to reach their existing and potential customers will often encounter some of the common problems of email marketing. Solutions, luckily, are on hand.

Deliverability

Possibly the biggest issue for email marketers is that of deliverability – all the issues that surround making sure your messages are actually arriving in the inbox of the intended recipients. Although solving deliverability problems doesn’t necessarily mean your recipients will buy your products and click on your links, it does mean that they at least have the chance to. After all no one will – and no one can – click on a link they never see.

Behind the problem of deliverability is the nature of email marketing – conducted en-masse to a list of anywhere between a dozen people and millions. A lot of minor issues can add up to a significant proportion of your audience missing out on your messages and its far from unusual to see 10% or 20% of email marketing messages effectively disappear into the ether.

Here are the two reasons behind deliverability issues and their solution:
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