Sofia's Learning Summary: Viral Marketing & How To Craft Contagious Content
Credit to Coursera: Jonah Berger, Associate Professor
of Marketing, Wharton University of Pennsylvania
Creating Shareable Content
Contagious: How things catch on:
4 Drivers of Social Epidemics
1) What makes some things stick in
memory
2) How does one person's decision
influence another
3) Why do people share word of
mouth about some things rather than others?
4) How do social networks shape
spread on information and influence
Making messages stick:
1) Variation
2) Selection
3) Retention
Make it simple:
1) Analogies help
2) Find the core
- Pick 2 to 3 top idea units
- If listeners walked away with 1
thing, what should it be?
3) Leaves people wanting for more
when it is simple (the curiosity gap)
Make it unexpected
1) Violate expectations by
breaking a pattern
2) Surprise gets attention, but to
make something really sticky you need to hold attention (open a curiosity gap -
a mystery where people want to know the answer)
3) Be careful about repetition, it
dull surprises
Urban legends use concrete details
Make it concrete - it makes things
more memorable
1) Can you see it (visualise)?
2) Help people see what you are
saying
Make it credible - things believe
what we say/write
~ Make comparisons
~ Testable credentials
Emotional stories - make people
care - evoke emotions - play with people heartstrings
-Concrete ideas generate more
emotion
Use the 3 WHYs
Ask again and again - Keep asking
until you hit something core
1) Why do people use Google search
- because they want to find information
2) Why do they want to find
information - because they want to accomplish something
3) Why do they want to accomplish
that thing - to connect with others, make their lives better
You can get your hands on the book
Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath to understand more
Power & Psychology of Social Media
-Social influences affect all
sorts of decisions
-One way social influence affects
us through conformity (imitation) ~ more likely to do something if others are
doing it ~ monkey sees, monkey do. Why? Due to informational influence and
shortcut to judgment
Normative Influence
-Fit in, attain rewards and avoid
ostracism
Using Social Influence to increase
Success
- Social influence increase
inequality ~ popular get more popular
- Also made success unpredictable
~ winner in one version almost last in another
- Herd or bandwagon effects
When social influence is
anti-social
Conformity or divergence
Promoting Positive Buzz in Marketing and Advertising
Word of mouth - targeting -
turning customers into advocates
Six Key Steps
1) Social Currency
2) Triggered
3) Emotion
4) Public
5) Practical Value
6) Stories
Social Currency
- How can we make people feel like
insiders? Smart, special and in-the-know?
- Find the inner remarkability
Triggers
- Top-of-mind means tip-of-tongue
Emotion
- Positive
- Negative
Public
- Built to show, built to grow
- Social proof
Practical Value
-News you can use
-Content Marketing
-Rule of 100 (% or numbers can be
better depends on the content/motivation) ~ how we frame that information
Stories - Drive people to action
Leveraging Social Media and Sharing
Ties are not random - people tend
to be friends with others like them - called homophily
a) Biased interaction
b) Biased tie formation
Network effects - the value of
something depends on the number of other people using it
Sprinkler vs. Waterfall Strategies
- Simple vs. Complex contagions
~ Simple (a piece of news, job info,
articles) - fewer dose of influence - sprinkler (spread in different
areas/demographic/geography/social group)
~ More complex (adoption is costly
or risky) - multiple doses of influence - waterfall (focus in one
area/demographic/geography/social group)
Social ties - describes the frequency
of interaction and influences what we share
a) Strong - family and friends
b) Weak - acquaintances, others
(these are more)
You may learn this course at Coursera, 100% online learning from
the world’s best universities and companies.
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