How Ideas Infect

How much does Facebook and Twitter pay you for spreading the word about their services to your friends who may just be wondering why they should sign up. Yes, it works like this: You tell a friend and a friend tells a friend’s friend and the list goes on and on at no cost. Seth Godins calls it the Ideavirus.

My guess is that you probably have an idea, a product, or service you plan letting others know about.
You would get little or no response if you decide to stick with the old annoying technique of flooding the mail box of your potential customers with whatever you intend offering them, or sending irrelevant bulk sms to mobile numbers you buy from a service provider.

The fact with people is that once your unsolicited advert email or sms or pop up web banners are received, they will ignore it for the following reasons:
1. They never asked for it in the first place, so why bother check.
2. They are not in need of that kind of information at that time.
3. Your product is just another of those desperate seeking customer products.
4. They already use a brand. So what difference would yours make.

What you need is Permission marketing, not interruption marketing as Seth Godin puts it in his blog. It works like this:
1. Your product, service, idea should be unique. It should be what people should naturally talk about.
2. Interrupt a few people with it.
3. Those people spread it.
4. Keep improving it.
5. Offer free but unique additional services

Example: The Facebook idea like we know started from a room in Havard where Mark Zuckerberg created a unique social community online. (Step 1)… A few friends and then the students at havard bought into the idea (Step 2)… Those people loved it and helped spread it, till it got to you and you helped spread it further (Step 3)…. He and his team kept improving it (Step 4)…and now you can enjoy free and better services from facebook, create fan pages, events, groups and more addiction..
Let your idea, product or service, speak for itself.