Viral marketing and viral advertising is the ability to create a promotional piece that attracts and speaks to the masses; and through its intuitive creativity, motivates people to share it with others (usually through social media networks).

What does this have to do with successful blogging? Whether you have a personal blog or a company blog, you want to promote your blog by the fastest means possible. That is, through a viral blog post.

And what entices people to read a blog post? The title, of course! The first sign of an interesting and worthy-of-your-time blog post is its title….as long as the blogger follows through in the post.

Here are 7 suggestions in which you can begin crafting a title that will spread across the Internet like a bad case of influenza in downtown Toronto:

1. Use lists. Point made with this post, right? People love lists because it’s a lot of information in an easy-to-read, scannable format. Still not convinced? Well, here are 7 reasons to use list posts.

2. “How-to” posts. A lot like lists posts, how-to posts speak to the general public’s desire to learn something quickly in order to solve a problem even more quickly. I mean, who doesn’t want to learn how to make the perfect steak or how to find an SEO company?

3. Mention celebrities. The majority of people LOVE celebrity gossip. So why not capitalize on it? Use a celebrity name in your title but remember, by doing so you’re in fact promising the reader that you’ll be mentioning them in your post. Relate the celebrity or whatever’s going on in their lives to the point you’re trying to make in your post.

4. Include other hot topics. What’s going on in the world today? What’s on everyone’s lips? Whether it’s the U.S. government elections, the new Apple MacBook Air or the latest ecological warning, people want to know more! They will enter these search terms into the search engines and see what pops up. Wouldn’t it be great if your blog was one of these search results?

5. Use metaphors. One of the best ways to get your point across to your audience is to relate it to something familiar to them. Use metaphors to describe, persuade and elicit emotion, and make it easy for your audience to understand your perspective.

6. Think big or go home. This is also known as, hyperbole. It is a figure of speech or an exaggeration that will catch your readers’ attention. Wouldn’t you read a blog post with the title, “Facebook is a Murder!”? Again, do not mislead your readers. Make certain you provide sufficient explanation in how your post relates to your title.

7. Use specifics. Apparently, there’s power in specificity in copywriting. People want the real deal so if you’re quoting research statistics, don’t round up or down. While there are always exceptions, in the case of titles, specifics will grab your readers by the eyes. Be precise and detail-oriented; and your readers just might believe you.

After you use some of these suggestions, we want to hear how it went! Was it easy or hard? Did your post end up on the front page of Digg? Comment to this post and share your blogging experience with everyone.

In the meantime, keep crafting those titles (and posts!) and return for more blogging tips on the Apollo Media blog.