Bibiliography

Sez, S (2012) Dreamweaver Tutorials, part 1, 2 and 3. Posted, 23^rd July 2012. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AqTyjm7brA , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTIA8TwKROY , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDIj8v46-PA

Sez, S (2013) Dreamweaver Tutorials CS6 part 19, posted 26^th June 2013. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy6k7D57lSY

Wilson, R (2012) The six simple principles of viral marketing. First published by Dr. Wilson in 2000. Available at: http://webmarketingtoday.com/articles/viral-principles/

Journal articles (2004) Viral Marketing or Electronic word-of-mouth Available at: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=296968&jid=JAR&volumeId=44&issueId=04&aid=296966

Eyes, M (2014) Viral Marketing, published by WP Greet Box WordPress Plugin. Available at: http://mariaeves.com/proven-viral-marketing-strategies/

Google Images (2000-2014) Facebook Icon. Available at: https://www.facebook.com/images/fb_icon_325x325.png

Anyasor, J (2013) Twitter, posted 23^rd December 2013. Available at: http://upcity.com/blog/2013/12/how-to-become-an-authority-on-twitter/

Hotmail(2012) Hotamil Email Service. Available at: http://www.kingmoney.net/offline/configure-hotmail-windows8

If I had another chance?

If I had another chance to complete my website, I would spend more time designing and developing the layout. I would find out how to deign and code a real frame around the site, and therefore present it better. I would also use more images to link to external pages. I would also test new colour themes to see if any worked better with my images. However, I believe I did well with the first website I created, as I managed to layout the text and images appropriately and and hyperlink everything.

Reviewing my website

My website consisted of 4 pages of information, the homepage being 'what is viral marketing', page two being 'how it began', page three being 'platforms' and page 4 being 'purpose'. I kept the background white, and let the only colour be from the frame and pictures.

I think I did well with this website, as I had never used Dreamweaver before, and did not use a template. I used Youtube tutorials to help me get to grips with the basics, and how to create a simple website. I used AP DIV for the whole website when entering text and pictures.

I managed to successfully link my pages together, and link pictures to external websites. I also managed to place all my information in appropriate places, and easily manoeuvre them if needed. I learnt how to code basic text and change the size of pictures using the code.

And More Research...!

This article was written by 6 different people, who all had an insight on viral marketing. They compared the concept and result of viral marketing to what they called 'electronic word-of-mouth'. This article helped me to further understand the concept and use of viral marketing, in order for me to write about it in my website.

Learn More...?

Looking at other websites, I found many of them had a side bar of external articles, where they had either got some of their information from or their inspiration from. This is why I chose to have one on the side, of two links I got a lot of my information from. 

Text

I chose Calabri and Comic Sans for the titles and text under 'learn more'. This is because they stand out and would be different from my other text with the information about viral marketing.

The informative text was Cambria. I used these three fronts because ther were clear and easy to read. I debated whether to have a background colour, for me to change the colour of the text, but when I had changed the background to black, it didn't fit my theme. So I kept the background white, text black, and allowed the images and website frame to give the colour.

Colour theme

I used light blue to make a frame for my website, because it is a fairly neutral colour. It also matched with my main picture of the 'go viral' image. Looking at templates on google and other websites, I saw that every site had a main picture at the top and a frame by the top, some extending all over the site page. This is why I chose an image to enlarge, and place at the top. I found the picture on the coding, and edited the picture size, by changing the numbers accordingly,

More Research

This is another article which I based a lot of my text on for my website. It set out good and interesting proposals of how viral marketing works and why it works so well.

Website Research

This website gave me an in depth insight into viral marketing, and how company's can easily exploit existing internet platforms. 

Another Youtube Tutorial

After creating my website base and pages, I had to link them together. I chose to use AP DIV boxes for every image and all my text, because it was easy to manoeuvre. I created a thin blue line in Photoshop, saved it as a JPEG, and inserted the image into an AP DIV box in Dreamweaver. This is how I made the frame around my website pages. 

This video taught me how to create relative and absolute links, relate being to pages within the same site and absolute being to external pages. I had already saved all my pages in the same folder, and therefore linked the pages together using the process for relative links. I then used the process for absolute links, and linked my images to the actual website. I had linked three images to: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Lets begin

I started by inserting the 'go viral' image at the top. To do this, I clicked: Insert, Layout Objects and AP DIV. This gave me a box in which i could easily manoeuvre. I then inserted another AP DIV box and clicked 'Spry Menu Bar'. This gave me the option to have 4 hyperlinks. I then inserted many boxes to write my text in, which i could easily manoeuvre.

Text for next two pages

Page 2 Text

So if Hotmail worked so well, why not keep using it? Other companies soon caught on to the 

trend, and started to exploit exisiting internet platforms to advertise for free! 

Facebook is a mega platform for other companies to advertise for free.Not only will company's 

pay for their advertising on the sides of pages, but will create new pages about their company's

products and services for people on the social network to like and share.

Twitter is also a platform which makes it easy for company's to advertise. All a person 

needs to do is tweet about a product or service which a company offers, and followers will 

like or retweet,allowing their followers to then carry on retweeting the post. This creates a lot of

attention for a company. 

Lastly, Instagram may be one of the newest social networking platforms which allows one message to go to numerous people. Instagram allows you to target specific audiences, by simply 'hashtaging' a word or phrase. Again, company's can create a profile, uploading images of products, which can be viewed by thousands of people. 

Page 3 Text

It works by allowing one to communicate with many people at the same time, converting 

a high percentage of them to new users and retaining those users. If this technique worked 

so well, why not keep using it?

It creates a high brand-awareness, drawing a lot of attention to a company, and resulting 

in more people entering the site, to view and buy products. 

As I said before, it conveys an implied endorsement from a friend, working much better than

third-party advertising. If you see your friends like a page or a company;s products you

reluctantly like the same. It comes into a concept where you try to feel a part of the social group,

and therefore want to buy the same products or buy from the same comapny to show you like the

brand. 

The main purpose, however, is simple and effective marketing. YOU are working for free, for that company you share pages and products about. You are doing it willingly as well. I mean, what is the harm, sharing a picture of your desired shoes? It goes a long way from what you firtst thougt!

Text for first two pages

Chosen topics for pages:
Homepage: What is Viral Marketing
Page 1: How it began
Page 2: Platforms
Page 3: Purpose

Homepage Text
Viral Marketing is a marketing technique, whereby information about a company’s goods and services is passed electronically from one Internet user to another.

For example, goods from amazon can be electronically advertised on social networks such as Facebook. These pages of specific goods can then be shared or passed from one friend to another.
Viral marketing is more effective than third-party advertising because it conveys an implied endorsement from a friend.

You know when your on your Facebook home page, reading your news feed, you see those shoes you were looking at earlier on the side of the page. It gives you an option to send or share to freinds, and you think, 'O why not? Kate's been asking to see them anyway! So you click 'share' and it comes up on everyone of your friend's facebook news feeds. This encouraes them to view the shoes, possibly even other goods on the website. This in turn, brings more attention to the site and resulting in people buying from the site.

Page 1 Text
In 1996, a web-based email service was launched, called 'Hotmail'. Each email sent through Hotmail included a promotional pitch, with a clickable URL link. This is how it began. Every person who sent an email through Hotmail, became in involantry salesperson, simply by using the service / product.

Even thought the emails were clearly advertisements, they worked a lot better than normal poster or website advertisements. They were an implied endorsement from a freind, meaning the friend has used this product and service and are highly recommending it. It works a lot like your favourite DJ reading commercials.

Hotmail quickly spread over the global networks, much like how a virus would spread, hence the term, 'viral marketing'. Hotmail's subscriber base quickly grew from zero to 12 million users in 18 months, with an advertising budget of $50,000.


It became the largest email provider in several countries, including Sweden and India, where it had done  no marketing whatsoever.

New to Dreamweaver

I had never used Dreamweaver before, so these videos helped me to learn the basics of the programme. I learnt how to insert text, and how to use the 'code', 'split' and 'design' view. These videos taught me that i needed to save all of my work within the same folder in order for my website to work and everything to show. It taught me how to make a basic website using a template, however, I did not use a template for my actual website.