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Making an impact on the Web can be hard work. However, if you work smart, you don’t have to do the hard part. That is the essence of viral marketing.

To be more efficient with viral marketing, you need to know where your idea can spread. Imagine a series of fields, mainly consisting of dry grass. Each of these fields represents a blog, forum, industry organization, or any gathering of people online. You also have a handful of matches, which represent your product or viral marketing campaign. To set an entire field on fire you wouldn’t just arbitrarily drop matches. You need to carefully choose the best place for the fire to grow, and then it will easily reach the entire field. Likewise with Internet marketing, you need to find influencers to help spread your idea, not just any random person. You don’t have time to talk to everybody, so you need the right people to do the talking for you.

So, where is the right place to start a fire? Start with the influencers within each online community, or industry. Being an influencer doesn’t necessarily mean they have the most friends on Digg or videos on Youtube. It means they are the most likely to communicate with or lead other people and organizations. Here are some characteristics to look for:

• many subscribers and useful comments (blog, Youtube, etc)
• actively participating with friends (Digg, blogging, etc)
• participation in conferences and tradeshows
• a significant list of business partners (businesses or industry groups)
• name recognition

When you know who to talk to, you will save time and yield more results with each campaign.