Advertisers dream of sparking a viral marketing campaign, one that catches fire from a tagline, a catchy tune, or a video moment. A true viral campaign is a spontaneous phenomenon that takes advantage of word-of-mouth or existing social networking sites like YouTube or Twitter to spread the message.

Word of mouth has always been one of the most effective ways to grow a business. People take ads with a grain of salt, but they tend to trust friends and relatives when told that a certain movie is great or a new restaurant has fantastic food. Pre-internet, such "trustworthy" spread of news and subsequent growth was a slow, but generally steady, affair, dependent on face-to-face or telephone chats between friends. Today, a website can go viral in a matter of hours, thanks to the power of networking sites like Twitter.

The internet has changed the way we do business-indeed, our whole society--in ways unthinkable even ten short years ago. The sheer connectedness of the World Wide Web is what wowed people then, and still does today. But the "web" is no longer just a collection of servers talking to each other, with all the content controlled by a handful of people who understand how to create HTML pages. Now everybody can connect to the entire world all by themselves, using any number of social networking sites that have the power to create overnight sensations.

You may have left a company behind, but odds are you still remember the people you worked with, some fondly, others not. Very likely, they remember you, too. Why not cash in on that established network of contacts built over your whole working life? LinkedIn, one of the fastest-growing networking sites on the web, does just that.

If your advertising budget is thin, there are still some basic and effective ways to raise awareness that you have a website. They will work on their own, quietly, as you go about the day-to-day business of running your company.