Marketplace for Good Content – Interview with VIRURL CEO, Francisco Diaz-Mitoma

Article first published as Marketplace for Good Content – Interview with VIRURL CEO, Francisco Diaz-Mitoma on Technorati.

Introduced at the Content Marketing Strategies Conference, hosted by the folks at Dlvr.it, VIRURL is a new platform that pays you to share links to videos, articles and games. “Our company charter is to make sure that the content is entertaining and consumable,” explains Francisco Diaz-Mitoma, CEO of VIRURL.
Technorati was given the first media Advertiser Account on the system, and I had some time to play with it. My first thought, “These guys get it.” VIRURL is entirely content distribution focused, enabling content people want to read and share, to make its way through the Web, and devoid of advertising. Quipped Francisco, “VIRURL strictly focuses on content marketing, whereas other word of mouth advertising platforms have essentially become offer walls and links to product pages.”

This is a content only marketplace and the team at VIRURL enforces that—reviewing every ad for quality and compliance. Francisco continues, “Sharing “free credit score services” is not natural and becomes annoying.” And he’s not just talking about the links, those television commercials have equally dulled our senses and activated our DVRs.

Users enjoy sharing content. Posting a link to a piece of quality content brings value to VIRURL users, which leads to more widespread sharing and re-sharing of content links. This creates a powerful viral marketing loop for content publishers.

How It Works

On the sharing end,  users can choose an item from the “Share and Earn” feed on the home page, and click the “Share” button to share their selected content link. Clicking on “Get Your Link” will generate a personalized link that users can post and share anywhere on the web. VIRURL also provides share buttons, enabling content sharing from your own site.

On the content advertising end of things, campaigns are entirely customizable by the user. Users provide the content link, arrange the content header and blurb, and select any icon they like. Budget, CPC, and campaign duration are all easily and intuitively managed through the campaign module. In just a few clicks, your content offering is live in the marketplace.

These guys are building the right team to deliver this inventive content marketing resource, too. They just added Merrill Brown, founding editor-in-chief at MSNBC.com, to their board, to help guide content decisions. The product is still evolving, as well. Users can expect to see more publishing tools that will make it easier to monetize their audience. “These tools will allow publishers to ‘set it and forget it’ instead of users having to come back to our platform on a daily or hourly basis.” Francisco describes.

Get in there and play with it, it’s fun. And right now, VIRURL is beginning to accept advertisers into their private beta. “Advertisers who are accepted into the private beta will receive $100 in free VIRURL ad dollars,” Francisco promises.