Mr. Wilson notes that this particular version of the meme, with 25 things, is a continuation/mutation of previous variants (including 10, 16, 22 and any other numbers of things), and he goes on to track its spread using a pool of 3,000 people who responded to a survey about their participation in the meme.

Anyway, this quasi-epidemiological look at the spread of this meme is pretty interesting, but what does this meme really mean?

On the viral marketing side, Wilson suggests a strategy of throwing a bunch of stuff out into the wild and seeing what sticks. (Which is similar to Clive Thompson’s look last year at the practice of targeting influencers, Is the Tipping Point Toast?, which suggests that the best targetted marketing may actually be mass marketing.)

But even if something goes viral, what’s the benefit? In this particular case, Facebook probably saw an incremental increase in pageviews and ad impressions, as well as increased awareness of the Notes feature through which the meme spread. Possibly also increased engagement, though I would guess that people who participated in the meme were already pretty engaged and had lots of people they could choose to tag. That’s a positive for Facebook (if not a really big one), but what can other businesses take away from this?

Scenario: There’s a variant of the 25 Things meme floating around now on Facebook, only they’re not random things — they’re 25 questions about your senior year in high school. Again, it looks like an organic outgrowth of the 25 Things meme. But what would happen if someone — say, a Reunion.com or a Classmates.com, tried to tie in some marketing message to the meme? Assuming people aren’t already burned out on the 25 things concept, would people avoid it because it had an explicit marketing component tied to it?

I would have to say that it depends. People like free stuff, though there’s a huge difference between “one month free” and no-strings-attached free, like free taco/ice cream/breakfast offers that seem to spread pretty well online.

And even some strings are okay — Burger King has done a pretty good job of using viral thingies. Their most recent successful foray on Facebook was the now-defunct Whopper Sacrifice (ditch 10 friends for a free Whopper).

Anyway, I guess what I’m trying to say is that it all goes back to metrics — the success of a viral marketing campaign can’t be judged solely on its own terms, but in the context of driving something concrete — sales, leads, etc.

I don’t really have a closer on this, so I’ll just end on a question: What are your feelings on the 25 things phenomena? Is there something that businesses can take from this, or is it a one-off that only has lessons for people who are trying to sell you on viral marketing?

The New York Times article about its creation and promotion, “Take Bacon. Add Sausage. Blog,” offers some insight in how the story propagated across the Web, so I wanted to see what kind of lessons we can take away for promoting your own small business endeavors.

The Chronology

The proprietors of BBQ Addicts wanted to drive traffic to their Web site to increase advertising revenue. Coincidentally, in December, a Twitter user challenged them to do something barbecue with bacon. They came up with their particular spin on a smoked bacon and sausage log, and posted it on their site 2 days before Christmas. They then saw a traffic spike on Christmas Day, and at some point it went viral.

The Tools

* One of the guys, Aaron Chronister, is an Internet marketer/search engine optimization guy. He also has 1,200 followers on his Twitter account.

* They (and others) posted links to the Bacon Explosion on social networking and social linksharing sites. (StumbleUpon is specifically mentioned.) Likewise, as seen on many sites, they have links so their visitors can also easily submit the page to linksharing sites (Digg, Twitter, and Delicious).

The Lessons

How can we make this relevant to your small business?

* People really like bacon. Seriously. Whether it’s bacon bras or bacon on cats, there’s something about bacon that people really, really like. Not only do Internet people like bacon, they like talking about bacon, and they’ll send bacon links to their friends. Bacon has a built-in audience, and one that’s ready-made to go viral.

Not many things have this kind of appeal. If your business doesn’t involve bacon, it still helps if you have a sense of what people have an affinity for. One thing you don’t want to do is indiscriminate spam everything you do to every social linksharing site out there. If you expect any sort of effective response, think about what people who aren’t you might find interesting or useful

* Use the tools at your disposal. Take advantage of social media tools like Twitter, StumbleUpon, Delicious, etc. Most of them are even free. And make it easy for your visitors to use these tools to share what you’re doing.

* Be an Internet marketer. And have lots of friends who are Internet marketers. All this means is that the Internet is a valuable tool for getting the word out, and there are people who know this. Connect with these people, understand what they’re talking about, talk to them, and be a contributing part of the community. People are not tools, but when you form real relationships with connected people, they will help you get your own word out (when you have something interesting or useful to say).

* You can try, but you never can tell. There is no secret formula for guaranteed viral success. And you don’t have to hit as big as the Bacon Explosion to be a success — getting known in your local or regional market can work just fine.

For some additional food for thought, check out 5 steps on going viral on Twitter and Go Beyond Blogging – Multi-Channel Marketing via Online Media.

Remember, the lesson here is not “Incorporate bacon into your business,” but instead, recognize when you’re doing something interesting or useful, then use the social media tools available to you to help get the word out among your expanding circle of connected friends.

If you’ve got thoughts specific to the success of the Bacon Explosion (is it a one-off, an outlier that we shouldn’t draw conclusions from?), or promoting your small business using social media tools in general, please leave a comment.

Here are some highlights from the interview which is embedded at the end of this post:

Loving Digg but seeing an opportunity in the marketplace

Laurie and many of her friends used Digg and thought it was a great concept. However, if any of you have been to the site, it is primarily a tech focused site with the audience being predominately male. Digg revolutionized the concept of “Social News” and there have been many clones of the site that didn’t add a whole lot of value to the social media landscape. Laurie and her co-founders looked around and while there were good blogs out there for women there was no, as she likes to call it, “Digg for Chicks”. So Kirtsy.com was born.

Power of Social Media

Laurie talks about how in the past this kind of content would have been shared with friends via e-mail as those “cool links” e-mails that fill our inboxes. When they built Kirtsy.com they did a soft launch, which is essentially putting the site out there without a lot of fanfare. Ironically, the site has grown due to the power of social media with a mention on Digg that brought so much traffic it crashed their site. Talk about irony.

The power of Social Media has transformed the site into a global presence with traffic coming from the US, Europe and Australia. As word of mouth grows, more countries are utilizing this “Digg for Chicks” and loving its relevancy and global reach.

What is also different about this site from a social news site like Digg is that it has editors where the competition relies just on the public to submit and let the law of popularity take effect. This has been a problem with groups of people “gaming” Digg to their advantage. Kirtsy.com avoids that by making sure there is some management of the channel and contribution of relevant content to make sure the site keeps its appeal and relevancy.

Two things you need to do to grow your site

Go viral

As Laurie mentioned previously, their soft launch and word of mouth approach has allowed their site to grow in spurts and not have a huge wave (the Digg post being the exception) that has them flying high and never growing beyond their initial push. Mentions from key bloggers like Guy Kawasaki has been instrumental in helping start these growth spurts.

Attend conferences

The other way they are seeing growth spurts is having the co-founders and editors attend conferences to promote the site. Whether it be speaking, sitting on a panel or just spreading the word in the hallway, it seems to have a positive impact on making those growth spurts happen.

What the future holds…

We expect to see great things from Laurie and her team to really go all the way to the top and create another success story for women entrepreneurs. Men and women alike can learn from her sage advice on growing a site without a lot of up front capital, building something that the market needs and growing it at a fast yet managable pace. We expect to see the site continue to evolve and get more popular than it already is. If you haven’t already, make a visit to Kirsty.com and as viral marketing goes “tell your friends, so they tell their friends, and so on”.