Our final segment in this series will highlight how to go viral with Scribd.com, and offer some closing tips.

Let’s Recap – Viral Marketing
Viral marketing is exactly what its name suggests — a type of marketing that spreads like a virus. Have you ever wondered why celebrities’ every move gets covered in the press? They have publicists that are tasked with creating “buzz” for their clients. The more “buzz” they can generate, the better off their client will be. And, since we can’t all afford to bankroll a publicist, we have to learn to generate our own buzz. Methods like the ones outlined in this book will help you use the principles of viral marketing to gain traffic, new prospects, and increased visibility.

A Few Other Ways Your Documents Can Go Viral
Scribd users can leave a comment about your document. As we mentioned before, positive comments and testimonials can prove to be extremely valuable, as they illustrate to others that you are a trustworthy business entity with valuable products and services.

Scribd users can also search for related documents to ones that they are viewing. This can be a great way to “piggy back” off of other documents’ traffic in instances where your content is closely related.

Keep these items in mind when you are creating and uploading documents – you want to utilize every possible advantage you can to make your participation in Scribd pay dividends.

Profiting From Participation in Scribd

• Set up keyword-focused profiles, create keyword-focused groups, and upload well-optimized documents promoting your products.
• Set up keyword-focused profiles, create keyword-focused groups, and upload well-optimized documents promoting your affiliate products.
• Utilize the power of “free” – and consider uploading items such as these: Archived issues of your newsletter, Blog posts, short articles, Reports or short ebooks, Desktop wallpaper, signature avatars, etc, Handy reference materials (conversion tables, etc), E-courses, transcript of a past webinar or seminar event, teleconference call, etc.
• Monitor your progress – be sure to keep a close eye on your performance metrics, and make appropriate changes as needed.

Closing Tips
The options of different formats can give you ideas on what kind of content to create. For example, you can create Power Point presentations and upload them to Scribd.

Remember that the search engines and websites like Stumble Upon love Scribd. Don’t just think traffic to your documents will only come from within the Scribd community. There are hundreds of thousands of people coming to Scribd directly from the search engines other Web 2.0 sites and well known authority websites.

If your documents are optimized correctly, they will get indexed in the search engines very quickly.
Scribd operates much like YouTube; and offers many of the same features. If you have experience driving traffic to your videos on YouTube, you can easily adapt the same techniques to your documents on Scribd.
A savvy Internet marketer can use Scribd as an added weapon in his or her marketing arsenal.

Create and upload documents with solid content. Focus on sharing documents that are informative and have real value.

Did you find this series helpful? Drop me a note and let me know!

In this segment, we’ll learn how to identify and use the traffic generated by Scribd.com.

Identifying & Using the Traffic
At the right you will see an example graph of where traffic to a particular document is coming from. What is interesting about this feature that you can see which sources are sending traffic to a document and what percentage of the traffic is coming from each source.

Where Does the Traffic Typically Come From?

• Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, & MSN
• Web 2.0 sites like Stumble Upon, YouTube, and MySpace
• Digg
• Within the Scribd website itself
• Other third-party sources

HELPFUL HINT: When you create a document, look for other popular documents that are focused on the same topic. If a significant amount of traffic is coming to that document from Stumble Upon, for example, you’ll want to use Stumble Upon to send traffic to your document.

Think of it like this: The sources are “converting” if they’re sending traffic to documents related to your content. That said, if you optimize your content properly, those same sources should send traffic to your documents on Scribd.

Map of Users
Another helpful metric to use is the Map of Users. This will tell you the geographic location of viewers of your document. This could be a helpful tool for those who publish documents that are location-specific. Remember, documents can also be classified by language.

Indexing
This metric shows you if the Scribd page where a document is located has been indexed, and also shows the view log for a document.

The traffic analytics feature on Scribd is great for research. You can research the traffic of documents related to your niche and figure out how to better “optimize” your documents (title, tags, description, content, etc.) so that you can piggyback off of the traffic coming from other documents.

TIP: Take a look at a popular document in Scribd that has gotten a lot of views, comments, has received a significant number of “likes,” etc.

Using Traffic Analytics, make note if the document is indexed in the search engines. If so, make note of the search queries where the traffic is coming from. View the document and take note of the tags the document uses. You can create a related document, optimize the content, and use the same tags.

If a document is getting a significant amount of views by using the traffic analytics feature you’ll have an idea of where the traffic to that document is coming from and you can then piggyback off its traffic by creating a closely related document that is well optimized and properly tagged.

Research and savvy use of traffic analytics is the key to skyrocketing your traffic with Scribd.

Going Viral With Scribd
There are 2 ways that users can send a document to others, by clicking on the “Email This Doc to a Friend” tab or by clicking on “Send to Friend” link. Users can also embed a document on a website or blog.

Documents can also be shared on other Web 2.0 properties. Viewers can make your documents viral by telling friends through email or using other Web 2.0 properties spread the word about your documents.

Our final segment in this series will highlight how to go viral with Scribd.com, and offer some closing tips.

In this segment, we’ll cover how to use the search queries at Scribd.

Using the Search Box to Locate Content
Many Scribd users will use the search box to find content on topics that they are interested in. When users search for content by keyword, we already know that the results initially show up based on relevance.

The relevancy of a document on Scribd in regards to a keyword search has to do with the combination of:

• The most popular documents
• The most liked documents
• The most viewed documents
• The most discussed documents

Users can sort the results by number of views, most recent, most liked, etc., but most won’t.

But guess what? It doesn’t really matter how documents are ranked within keyword searches or how users sort the search results because there are two ways you can beat out the search results for your targeted keywords regardless.

Understanding Traffic Analytics
One of the most fascinating features of Scribd is the traffic analytics feature. You can get a general idea where traffic is coming from to any document uploaded on Scribd.

Using traffic analytics is effective in researching potential niches by studying other documents and by studying traffic that has been generated to your own documents.

Search Queries
You will be able to see what search queries people are using on the search engines, Scribd, and elsewhere to find documents on Scribd.

Knowing this, we want to take full advantage of those search queries by insuring that we optimize our listings. To do this, we’ll want to take into consideration the following items:

• Optimizing our documents so that they get indexed, both on Scribd, as well as the search engines;
• Taking care to target specific keywords and keyword phrases for our documents, groups and profiles

In our next segment, we’ll learn how to identify and use the traffic generated by Scribd.com.

In this segment, we’ll discover how to build your list with downloads, and how to leverage the features at Scribd.com to your advantage.

Building Your List With Downloads
No doubt you’ve heard the saying, “the power is in the list.” Your mailing list is perhaps your most valuable business asset. By building and maintaining a targeted list of prospects to contact each time you have a new product, you will be able to save a great deal of time, effort and expense in marketing – simply by focusing on your existing list of targeted prospects.

Never Underestimate the Power of “Free”
Everyone loves to receive things for free. Why not use this to your advantage? There are many things that you could potentially offer that would serve as both valuable content, as well as promotional tool. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Software script or utility
• Reports or short ebooks
• Desktop wallpaper, signature avatars, etc
• Handy reference materials (conversion tables, etc)
• E-courses
• MP3 audio file of a past webinar or seminar event, teleconference call, etc.

TIP: You may wish to only upload a “teaser” or portion of an article, which then directs the reader to visit your website for the full report. This would enable you to create a lead-capture form on your homepage. It is very important that you capture those leads, and begin to build rapport. Today’s leads can be tomorrow’s customers!

Leveraging Features to Your Advantage
Users of Scribd search for content through browsing, searching for specific keywords, and through the tag cloud to find related documents within whatever topic they’re interested in.

Using Search
When a user does a search on the Scribd website, they will likely do so by typing in a keyword. When the results of the search are returned, documents will show up in the search results based on various factors – the number of views, their popularity, number of discussion comments, how well-liked, how many times selected as a “favorite” by others, how relevant it is to the searched keyword, etc.

Another Option – Browse
Users also have the ability to browse through documents based on keywords. Again, when the results are returned, they will be displayed based upon a number of factors:

Users can view:

• The most popular documents
• The most liked documents
• The most viewed documents
• The most discussed documents

What you want to do is make sure that your documents are tagged properly, and that they target your specific audience.

Documents uploaded to Scribd are indexed according to:

• Title of a document
• Description of a document
• Content within a document
• Tags

Leveraging Tags
The tags used to describe the content within your document are very important. For example, if you’ve uploaded a document on dog training than you will want to use the appropriate tags. Tags are how users will find your documents on Scribd.

The Tag Cloud:
Find your niche or target a niche by clicking on a tag within the tag cloud. Look to see what documents show up in the results. When you do this, you’re specifically performing a tag search. Documents that have used the tag you selected in the tag cloud will show up in the search results.

What position the documents show up in the search results is initially based on the number of views the document has received, but users can sort the results in other ways as well.

There’s a very easy way to make sure your documents are positioned at the top of the results when people are searching for content in your niche using tags. First, let’s go back to the tag cloud: Let’s assume that we wanted to click on “branding”

NOTE: The size of the font of the tag indicates the popularity and frequency of the tag by Scribd’s users.

Users can sort the results of a tag search by views, relevance, most recent, most liked and the popularity score – a combination of all those factors.

Each tag search – whether done through the tag cloud, through the search box or by clicking on the tags of other documents – show up initially based on the number of views. Your goal is for all of your documents to show up “above the fold” (in the results that show up without the user having to scroll further down).

In our next segment, we’ll cover how to use the search queries at Scribd.

In this segment, we’ll learn a little bit more about groups, and how to manage them to your advantage.

Managed Groups
Creating a managed group is the best option to select for most marketers. This option will allow anyone to view the documents in the group, but only you as the admin can approve or invite new members and you control the documents. You’ll notice a bullet point to describe “Managed Public” groups:

Managed Public groups are useful for small groups who wish to focus on a particular theme but want to maintain control over membership.

Getting a substantial number of members to join your group is not necessarily that important. What is important is that users on Scribd can view the documents in your group regardless of whether they join or not.

Using Scribd Groups Effectively

• Create a group focused on your particular topic.
• Create several documents on the topic, upload them to Scribd
• Include your documents in your Scribd groups. It’s a good strategy to have several documents, covering the same topic all in the same group.

NOTE: As the admin of a group you can decide what documents are included in the group. You can, and probably should, choose to only allow your documents in the group.

Creating User Profiles That Generate Clicks
Open an account and create a profile for each niche or topic that you promote. What? Why would you want to do that?

When someone does a keyword search on Scribd:
Results for groups that are focused on the keyword show up above the search results (documents), and
Profiles of users that are keyword-focused show up as well.

Let’s take a look at an example:
If you were to put the targeted keyword in your username and/or within the info you include in your profile, your profile will show up in the results just under the groups and above the search results for documents related to the keyword.

What does this accomplish?
By simply creating a group and a profile focused on specific keywords, your content will get exposure in Scribd without worrying about where your documents rank in Scribd’s search results.

Generating views to your documents using Scribd is the most effective when you combine the tag strategy with the group/profile strategy.

Uploading Documents to Scribd

• First, click on the Upload tab.Scribd “accepts most document file formats” and will convert your document into several formats

• Fill in the title, description, and tags. Check if your document is adult content, and whether you want to keep your document private (not recommended).

• Scribd will upload your document and then begin converting your document into formats shown in the screenshot shown earlier in the report. Once your document is converted you will be able to view and edit it. To edit your document, click on the blue “Edit” button and once you get on the next screen you can edit the title, description, and tags.

• Next, you’ll want to click on the “More Advanced Options” link. Here you will be able to select the format, privacy, language, and license for your document. You are also able to select what formats* will be available for download. In addition, you can enable users to comment on the document.

* You can put your document in HTML format or keep it in the Flash Paper format.

Advantages to Selecting the HTML Format
If your document is in HTML format, viewers can click on URLs that you have included in your document and be sent wherever you want them to go – without ever leaving Scribd.

This option lends itself well for short reports and ebooks – allowing readers to gain instant access to your website (and don’t forget all those affiliate links, too!)

In our next segment, we’ll discover how to build your list with downloads, and how to leverage the features at Scribd.com to your advantage.

In this segment, we’ll focus our social networking efforts on Scribd.com, and how to utilize it as a promotional tool.

What is Scribd?
Scribd is a Web 2.0 website; and has been referred to as the “YouTube of documents.” Scribd allows users to upload and share a wide assortment of documents.

As of this writing, Scribd is fairly new on the Web 2.0 landscape, and isn’t as widely known as some of its counterparts – yet, according to the website, it “serves” documents to over 10 million people monthly!

Scribd is positioned to be another great marketing venue for those who are savvy enough to take advantage of all it has to offer. The viral nature of Scribd makes it an attractive venue for marketers – especially those that are on a tight budget.

Unlike traditional advertising methods, viral marketing relies on the eagerness of one person to pass on the information to their family and friends. That said, viral marketing needs to go the extra mile to avoid being a “typical” ad message. Viral marketing campaigns often take the shape of sponsored games, utilities, software, photos, or short videos that have been branded to the sponsor. You can upload all types of documents and Scribd accepts all major formats: MS Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Open Office, PDF, Rich Text Files, and HTML.

Now that we know what types of documents we can upload to Scribd, we need to determine what types of documents would serve as promotional tools. Here are a few that come to mind:

• Your monthly newsletter – great way to gain new subscribers
• Product spec sheets – for new releases, upgrades, etc.
• Press releases – adds another inbound link to your press room!
• “Leaked Chapters” of ebooks you are offering for sale
• Special reports that upsell other products or services
• E-courses that upsell your products or services, or affiliate products
• Flyers for upcoming special events
• Usable freebies – things like tip calculators, weight conversion charts, etc. that are branded to your company
• User guides for your products or services – if tagged properly, these can actually guide customers to you for purchase
• Powerpoint presentations, brochures and more

These are just a few examples to get you started. The possibilities are endless.

Getting Started With Scribd
Opening an account at Scribd is quick, easy and of course free. Choose a user name, password, and provide a valid email address. That’s it! You are well on your way.

The Value of Creating Targeted Groups or Profiles
Whenever someone searches for content on Scribd by keyword, groups related to the keyword and profiles related to the keyword are positioned at the top of the screen above the search results!

By way of an example, let’s say someone types in the keyword “dogs” in the search box at Scribd:

There may be hundreds, or even thousands of documents that Scribd has indexed for specific keywords; however, if you create a group or a profile that targets a keyword, your group or profile will outrank any specific document that shows up in the search results. Think of these strategies like having sponsored ads above Google’s search results for a particular keyword, and employ them accordingly.

Creating Groups at Scribd
Creating a group at Scribd is both quick and easy. Here’s what Scribd says about groups:

“Scribd Groups are a great way to share documents with your friends, school, or organization. They are also great for organizing existing Scribd content. We like to think of a group as a library of documents focused on a particular topic.”

Tips for Creating Your Group:
Create a group focused on a specific keyword or set of keywords. Be sure to include the keyword(s) in the title and description of your group. By doing this, your group will be positioned at the top, above the search results for that keyword.

NOTE: You may want to consider targeting keywords that have yet to be targeted, or ones that have only a few groups, as this will allow you to make best use of this method.

When you create a group, it is important to make sure that the title of the group specifically tells the user what the group is about. Think of the title of the group you create as a headline on a sales page; you want the title of the group to immediately grab the attention of your targeted audience.

In our next segment, we’ll learn a little bit more about groups, and how to manage them to your advantage.