What Multiple Orgasms Can Teach You About Viral Blogging

Strange title I know, but I was looking at some video on Youtube tonight and came across a video of Donna Summer singing one of her hits called ‘Love To Love You Baby’.

I remembered reading something about this song years ago, so I did a little research and found what I was looking for.

Now you may be wondering what a Donna Summer hot from the 1970’s has to do with the title of this post and blogging in general, I’ll get to that.

Love To Love You Baby

In 1975, Donna Summer released Love To Love You Baby in the US and Britain. The song was a full sixteen minutes long and took up the entire first side of the album of the same name.

OK, all very interesting stuff, but what does this have to do with viral blogging? Well the thing about this song is that it had a viral element to it.

Going viral is not a new phenomenon, that has suddenly appeared with the Web. Sure the Web makes it easier in many respects, and certainly faster, but it is not unique.

The viral element to this song was the sound and the story behind it that created the fuss. In the song.

It was reported that Donna Summer literally laid on her back and recorded the song in one take, groaning and moaning her way through all sixteen minutes of it.

The orgasmic pleasure she portrayed was so realistic that the song was banned by the BBC — whose censors counted 22 “orgasms”. Likewise, Time Magazine counted 23 “orgasms” and the song was denounced by the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

I bet you can figure out what happened next. Yep, the song became an International hit, climbing to #2 on the US charts and making the top 5 in the UK.

Viral Orgasm

At the time, the media reported that the orgasmic sounds on the album were real and made all kinds of fuss over it. I am not sure about the marketing, but I would say it is a pretty reasonable guess that the record label and marketing execs deliberately pushed this angle and more then likely were the ones that instigated the entire campaign and uproar.

It worked, this one hit took Donna Summer out of European obscurity and catapulted her to the top of the International charts as the Queen of Disco. I’d call that a pretty effective example of viral marketing.

How To Leverage Viral Blogging

Now I am not suggesting that you all go out there and moan and groan your way through a podcast, that’s just not sexy; what you can do though is pay attention to your posts, especially the title. You should not aim, or expect every post you write to go viral, it just ain’t gonna happen. What you should do is think about your titles a little more when you are writing something you think may get attention.

If you want an example, take a quick look at the front page of Digg; I just did and here are a couple of examples.

• The Bizarre History of 10 Common Sayings
• 10 (Almost) Impossible Things to Do With Your Body
• Man with suicide victim’s heart takes own life
• The Saddest Picture You’ll Ever See

Now see if the same stories are as attention grabbing with more mundane titles.

• The History of Common sayings
• Things to Do With Your Body
• Transplant Patient Commits Suicide
• You can see the difference can’t you.A mangy looking kitten

New Power

Now that you are in possession of this amazing new power, do not abuse it, you still have to give something back, or you will quickly get ignored by the same crowd that was attracted to your title. Unless you have an abundance of entertaining articles or content, you should not try and make every single title have a viral element. What you should do though is build upon the traffic it creates.

One viral post is not enough to give you long term growth. While it can be extremely effective, you need to build upon it. If all you did was run the one viral campaign and then sit back, thinking that your marketing is done, you would have wasted a golden opportunity. You need to grasp the moment and maintain the buzz, building upon it to establish your blog.