As a marketer, watching a breakout viral story unfold before my social network eyes is always fascinating. How did that start? Why did that one catch fire and others didn’t?

Last month, I wrote this article for ClickZ, in collaboration with my colleague Roger Katz, on just these topics, for Friend2Friend — “What brands can learn from the #ALSIceBucketChallenge” summarizing recommendations as follows:

• Be social platform agnostic
• Leverage the social network effect
• Make it meaningful, but make it fun!
• Make it clearly actionable
• Give it time to catch fire, and
• Involve celebs if you can!

You can read an explanation for these recommendations at ClickZ.