The power outage in Florida today makes me think of how things can go viral in any area of life.
If you aren't aware of the outage, it started at about 9 pm EST, and spread across much of the state of Florida. Thankfully, there aren't any indications it was related to terrorism, and the nuclear reactors are in good shape. It ended up affecting somewhere around 800,000 people during the day, with some still without power.
The thing I wanted to bring up here, as far as viral goes, is that it can cut both ways for marketing, just like it can for the power grid.
Once the power went out at a main generator, the viral effect went into action, and city after city went down.
Just keep it in mind with our online marketing, and any marketing for that matter, that what viral marketing gives it can also take away.
We have to have the equivalent of backup generators and power in order to survive in a viral world.
That means having a minumum some basic backup plans in place in case our marketing backfires on us, so we can respond swiftly and stop the viral marketing power grid from negatively impacting us on a larger level.
The same power that makes something go viral in a positive way, can also turn on us and go viral in a negative sense. To not be prepared for that type of viral failure could cause our businesses to fail, or at minimum destroy our campaigns.
At the same time, we also need backup plans in place in case our campaigns are wildly successful, beyond what we had dared hope for. Things like having agreements in place with our hosting companies in case we go beyond our bandwidth allowance. Many marketers have lost a lot of sales because they didn't have flexible plans in place in case their campaigns exploded.
We need to be prepared for both great viral success as well as potential negative viral results. If not, our businesses will go dark like the Florida cities did today.
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