It is easy to get lost on the Internet. Viewers are easily distracted as they hop from site to site, often forgetting where they’ve been. This can make for fun and interesting web surfing, but it isn’t necessarily good for your business. You want a lot of people to see your content, and pass it on to a friend, a social group, or even an entire network. And most importantly, you want this to happen with little effort on your part. You want a “viral pop.” You need a method for catapulting the content from your site, blog, social networks, or multi-media channels across the Internet.

If you invested time in developing your social networks (getting followers on Twitter, Fans on Facebook, etc.), you are ready to try viral marketing; now you can put this community to work for you. Here are five concrete methods for getting the viral fire started.

Be Active in Your Online Community

Be involved in your community. If you find that certain bloggers read your corporate blog and join your community, follow them back and make comments on relevant posts to which you can add some expertise or further knowledge on the topic. If you regularly hear from some customers with feedback, take the time to respond thoughtfully. Be proactive about commenting on other relevant blogs and news articles, offering insightful comments. And, don’t forget social media. Follow your readers and influencers into other communities. Befriending and knowing social media evangelists can also pass your message along exponentially. Find the loudest voices in your industry and get to know them. By “loudest” I mean those with, for example, the most followers on Twitter, who consistently offer intelligent information to the industry or community.

Say Something Interesting

Your everyday press release or blog post filled with corporate jargon will never get a viral pop (unless they are roasting you). You need to entertain your audience, be provocative, take a stand. Better yet, be funny. Whether it is text, video, interactive games, images, text messages or songs, you need to be different or unique. Video is particularly hot right now. It seems every week we see a new video circle the globe. Do you remember the classics, like “You Suck at Photoshop”? or “Will It Blend?“? Both of these were inexpensive to produce and were extremely successful in selling product.

After you create the content, you shouldn’t simply wait and hope that someone will take an interest. There are a number of excellent tools that can prod your community along to start the viral cycle:

ShareThis makes a widget that you can embed into your site. With only a click or two on this widget, your visitors can share any content with their entire network of contacts. Users can import address books and friend lists, and share content through any other social media tool or network including Reddit, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. The customizable widget also provides backend analytics that tell you what people are sharing and how. The upside? Not only is your content making its way beyond the ordinary borders of your community, but you know what is resonating so you can tweak future content accordingly.

Ping.fm is another tool that makes sharing with your entire community really easy. It is a simple and free tool that allows you to easily update all of your profiles, messages, and status information with only a click from the Ping.fm site, a Firefox browser add-on, or a community toolbar (SMS, MMS, IM, email, or third-party and developer apps). You should also encourage your users to use this tool and “Ping” your stuff to their entire network.

Digg bills itself as a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. According to the company, “From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our users.” With Digg, everything is community driven, from submissions to voting. The most popular content, no matter what that is, bubbles to the top. So, if you’re relatively sure that you have a winning promotional video or informational article, Digg is a way to get it in front of a broader audience. You can even use Ping.fm to alert your community to your content’s presence on Digg – and ask them to vote for you! Their votes can help drive attention, which can in turn drive more attention, and so on.

Moreover, Sharethis, ping.fm, digg, and more can be integrated into branded browser applications and allow viral distribution from anywhere on the web. Through these conduits’, users can easily access these viral tools and use them more often to increase the chatter.

You can’t control entirely whether a campaign will go viral, unfortunately. Even the best planned campaigns can fall flat, but what you can control is whether you’ve laid the groundwork to put your community to work for you. Be present, be relevant, and be wise. And most importantly, make it easy for them. I hope it’s your stuff that is everyone tells me that I MUST see next time.

About The Guest Author: Adam Boyden, president of Conduit, is responsible for the strategic direction, marketing, business development, and U.S. operations for the company. Boyden is an expert in online and Web 2.0 marketing and a well-published author.