Planning for viral marketing is one of those things that has never made complete sense to me. I understand what it is and why it's good, but I've never thought you could just make anything go viral.

A lot of the stuff you read about how to do it neglects to point out that for something to go viral, it actually has to be good. For the most part, people don't pass around junk.

But you see ebooks and other stuff all the time that is trying to be viral by adding a line at the end that says something like "Feel free to pass this along to your friends".

That's just not going to cut it.

I was poking around on Seth Godin's blog today and came across this post about a report from Jupiter Research stating that viral marketing only works about 15% of the time.

Seth points out the following:

True viral marketing happens not when the marketer plans for it or targets bloggers or skateboarders or pirates with goatees, but when the item/service/event is worth talking about.

Exactly.

If you're trying to make something go viral, don't try to do it with something that isn't great. Come up with a great idea first, then watch as it happens all by itself.