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The Impact of Viral Facebooking: What We Can Learn From Bra Colors

Posted in: Blog, Industry News by SpiderWriters on January 11, 2010

Perhaps, if you checked the statuses of Facebook friends over the weekend, you saw them, too. Multitudes of women, posting a single color beside their avatars. Black, white, peach, red, lavender, pink…every color of the rainbow. It seemed some female friends were in on the joke, judging from their comments. If you’re a man, no doubt the movement confused you. An eventual missive in my inbox spilled the goods: the oft-forwarded form message asked women to post their bra color in their status to raise awareness for breast cancer.

A nifty idea, and one that truly proved the power of viral marketing. The Facebook bra flap has since gone on to attract the attention of national wires and morning talk shows. Whether the stunt has actually helped raise funds for breast cancer research is debatable, but one thing is clear: if you come up with a compelling idea and convince just a few people to play along, chances are you could spread your brand quickly throughout the country.

Can You Beat the Bra?

With different applications on social media sites like MySpace and Facebook vying for users’ attentions, you as a social media marketer may wonder if you can compel thousands of people to spread your gospel. One thing to know about viral marketing is that what you promote must be interesting enough to grab one person, much less a thousand. Plant the seed, and the rest follows, but that seed must be potent.

How do you make a viral campaign in Facebook, or even Twitter, work? First and foremost, if you wish to attract mass attention to a specific cause or item, you want to be certain what you plan doesn’t overtly advertise something. The Facebook Bra fad worked because it introduced some mystery (why are all these women posting colors?) and because its ultimate goal was to raise awareness about something to which all women, regardless of age, race, and creed, could relate – the risk of breast cancer. If you are running social media for a non profit organization, for example, applying a creative method for getting the word out about your cause can prove beneficial.

If you run a business and are trying to sell a product? It’s possible you may up end dead in the water quickly if you approach hundreds of Facebook friends and fans imploring them to plug your products. Where’s the fun in that? However, if you encourage a viral campaign related to your business but doesn’t outwardly sell anything, you have the opportunity to market yourself internally. Each mail you send to would-be participants should contain your main URL. For every message forwarded to another friend that is kept whole, your site is exposed to more and more people. This is where the true “virus” takes root.

How quickly can a campaign spread. There’s no telling how well, or how poorly, you’ll do. If you bomb out the starting gate the first time, don’t feel discouraged. Sometimes you’ll need to try an assortment of tricks before something hits. The more you fire up your inventive side, the more likely you can harness social media for your benefit.