I think viral mareting is pretty much the coolest thing in the world. You do something cool, you post it online, and a few days later it has spread all over the web, you're famous, and (hopefully) the cash starts rolling in. The problem with viral marketing is that it's so difficult to figure out what's going to be a hit. Sure, I submitt my blog posts to digg.com and link back to my blog whenever I post anything on the web, but this is hardly viral marketing. It takes a certain EDGE, a certain out-of-the-box thinking that makes it worth sindication.

For my buck, the two most powerful viral marketing tools on the web are youtube and digg.com. Youtube is fantastic because it is so easy to imbed videos on other sites. This creates a syndication engine that exposes your content to an exponentially large audience. I post it on youtube, everyone sees it there, some of them embed it in their blogs, websites, social media, etc. and before long everyone's seen it. The problem with youtube is that there is so much content that it takes something extremely funny, shocking, impressive, etc. to inspire sindication. The problem with most businesses is that they are beyond reluctiant to put something edgy out there for fear that it will make them look bad. Unfortunately you have to have the guts to reap the rewards.

I must admit that I don't know exactly why digg.com is so freakin awesome, but it totally is. I could spend days there! Apparently a lot of other people do to, but I don't personally know that many. It's more of a community within a community, and it's one that I've fully embraced. For those who are unfamiliar, digg is basically a forum for posting cool stuff that you find on the internet. You post it and then anyone else who likes it can 'digg' it, and the more diggs a post has the better it's supposed to be. Digg seems to work a little bit slower than youtube in a viral sense, but the content is way better. If you've got hours to kill digg is awesome. My favorite digg submissions are the 'top 10' lists. You pick the top 10 best or worst or whatever of any topic you like. In fact, I'm currently working on my own 'internet marketing' top 10 list. Feel free to help me out with some suggestions.