I’ve written before about how to make a video go viral. This book takes us deeper into the phenomenon and looks at the broader picture of social epidemics. Berger has developed a model for explaining marketing virality called STEPPS. It breaks down like this:

1. Social Currency
2. Triggers
3. Emotion
4. Public
5. Practical Value
6. Stories

All of these factors are key to generating that priceless commodity: word of mouth.

Social currency

“Here’s a little secret about secrets: they tend not to stay secret very long.” – Jonah Berger

We’re social creatures. Even introverts like me have opinions and want to share them. We want people to think we’re interesting and entertaining. Berger suggests marketers “give people a way to make themselves look good while promoting their products.”

The first big takeaway from this section is for brands to “find the inner remarkability in any product or idea.” Although Berger uses the classic Blendtec Blender example here, his deep dive into the history shows that the videos of blenders blending, well, everything, captured something the founder was already doing as a quality test for the blenders. Knowing that such a successful idea was the result of careful observation rather than magic makes the viral success of those videos seem all the more achievable for any brand.

As Berger described game mechanics (a fascinating read for anyone trying to increase engagement) and how that plays into our competitive natures, I had some pretty shameful flashbacks to the many hours I once spent sending virtual plants to friends over Facebook.

And his reflections on how marketers can manipulate demand helped me connect with my inner consumer. He made me think about how I respond to scarcity (I want to buy all it now) and being given insider access (I’ll tell all my friends about the great deal I just got). Achieving that level kind of empathy is always useful as long as you use it as an entry point only and don’t over-generalize your experience.

Triggers

“Every day, the average American engages in more than sixteen word-of-mouth episodes, separate conversations where they say something positive or negative about an organization, brand, product, or service.” – Jonah Berger

Triggers are the things in everyday life that make us recall anything from an earworm to a product. Berger uses the example of Rebecca Black’s song, “Friday,” and provides data that shows the video is most frequently viewed on, you guessed it, Friday.

Berger talks about how to leverage these triggers and to think carefully about the habitat that your product lives in. For example, thinking about peanut butter often conjures thoughts of jelly. Although peanut butter might also make you think of that time on your cousin’s boat when you first tried beer, think carefully about whether the trigger you’re using speaks to a wider experience. Because in marketing, you want your customers to feel like they’re on the inside of the joke.

I thought about this last night when our news station featured a picture of a double rainbow, and I turned to my husband (who does not live his life on the internet) and said, “What does it mean?” He had no idea what I was referencing. So we spent a few minutes on YouTube (re)discovering some classic viral videos. If he’d been my audience for a product and I’d used that reference as my trigger, I wouldn’t have had time to bring him in on the joke and the connection would have been lost.

I also realized how much of my brain is taken up by obscure references to dated and only vaguely interesting videos. My immunity to virality and marketing is starting to feel like a myth.

Emotion

“When we care, we share.” – Jonah Berger

In this section, Berger looks closely at how the power of awe and other positive emotions inspire people to share. What I really appreciated is that he modified his research to go beyond that conventional wisdom. Ultimately what he found is that it’s not really how positive something is that makes people want to pass things along, rather it’s the state of heightened arousal that something provokes that incites people to share.

Quick aside: if anyone ever questions the power of social sharing, remind them that the “United Breaks Guitars” video caused United’s stock to drop 10% over a period of four days after the video went live.

Thinking about all the times I’ve ranted on Twitter about our local bus system or raved about an amazing customer service experience, Berger helped me remember how personal that state of heightened emotion can feel. As marketers, finding a way to channel the variety of strong emotions a product or service evokes is a fantastic opportunity to generate word of mouth.

Public

“People imitate, in part, because others’ choices provide information.” – Jonah Berger

It is this public aspect of social contagion that I thought I was most immune to. I think of myself as an innovator, not an imitator. But I realized that I follow cues as much as anyone—and that that’s not a bad thing. Social proof can help us “resolve uncertainty.” It’s also a powerful marketing tactic.

For example, Berger tells the story of two identical gyro restaurants—one with a super-long line and the other with no line at all. The one with the long line had received a fantastic write-up in a major magazine. That positive review and the line of people are both signals to a hungry lunch crowd that the first gyro restaurant is the place to go.

Where the public discussion gets really interesting is with the idea of behavioral residue—anything that makes a thought or action observable, like “checking in” at your favorite restaurant. This residue, which can be anything from a Livestrong bracelet to an “I voted” sticker, is how our actions can become contagious even if we don’t expressly talk about them.

Reading this section, I looked down at the t-shirt I was wearing, which features a large logo for one of my publishers, and realized I’m not only a follower of trends, I have embraced behavioral residue as a communication tool without even knowing it. You can see this in everything from the wedding pictures on my desk (to show off my relationship status) to the book reviews I write on weekends (to share information about great literature with the world).

Practical Value

“People share practically valuable information to help others.” – Jonah Berger

Sharing practical information is one of my favorite things. Because my audience is mostly creative writers, both my Twitter and Facebook are filled with calls for writers and application deadlines for artist residencies and grants. I rarely think about the fact that I’m marketing for these organizations. I just want to connect my friends with opportunities.

This section also delves into how people perceive value. As the daughter of an economist, I was delighted to read about Daniel Kahneman’s prospect theory (which basically says that people make decisions based on potential losses and gains with the information available at the time) and how it debunks the rational actor theory (which presumes that people have perfect information and are always looking for the best possible final outcome).

Instead, Berger writes, “The way people actually make decisions often violates standard economic assumptions about how they should make decisions” and about how shifting the reference points of a deal can actually make consumers want to pay more for an item.

Or, if you’re a teenaged girl, Kahneman would argue that it’s perfectly normal to violate curfew if it means having an extra hour of fun. Rational choice theory would say that she’s more likely to think ahead to the weeks of grounding she will soon receive.

Stories

“Narratives are inherently more engrossing than basic facts.” – Jonah Berger

The fact that Berger wrapped all these factors of contagion together into a section on narrative thrilled my writer self. But it’s true. Stories have the power to convey that we’re interesting people who have something pertinent to say that might make your life easier while adding practical value. Isn’t that everything? While complete immunity from social contagion seems impossible, I may have been underestimating how rewarding connecting all the parts of our lives can be.

One thing that Berger did not address is the curiosity gap. But we’ve got you covered there. To learn even more about why things catch and why you click on those Buzzfeed articles (even when you hate yourself for it), register for Sara Lingafelter’s webinar, The Principles of Virality. I’ve previewed it, and let me tell you, it’s the best kept secret in town.

The post Marketing Tactics so Contagious, Even a Professional Isn’t Immune appeared first on Portent.

2 Good Ways To Get The Word Out On the Internet

Both these methods are about audience building. You build audience by giving them information, not a sales pitch. David Ogilvy knew that, long before the internets came along.

1. Find the 50 most influential writers and bloggers in your space. For example, if you’re a travel company, find travel bloggers. If you’re a car company, find the car sites. Then send them one of your product, for free, with a personal note asking them to please review it. They’ll write about it.
2. 6-12 months before your product launch, start your own blog. Establish your authority in your product’s space. If you’re writing an internet marketing book, blog about that (cough cough). But don’t just talk about how wonderful you are, either. Give them useful information. When your product launches, you’ll have a prefabricated audience.

Yes, these things take time and effort. They even cost some money (gasp). But do a little math, will ya?:
If you get 10 relatively influential folks to write about you, then at least 100 bloggers who haven’t had a creative thought in their lives will pick up the story and run with it. That gets you links you wouldn’t have otherwise had, and gets you leverage for your long-term search marketing efforts. That’s the worst case.
Best case, you get an endorsement from someone with real authority, and customers flock to your virtual doors. All for the cost of 50 products and some of your time.
And writing your blog for 6-12 months may cost you an hour a day.
But Ian, you cry, I don’t have an hour a day!
Wait… What? You don’t have an hour a day to sell your product? If you aren’t going to spend any time selling your product, who will?
Uh huh. Go write your blog, will ya? Or hire some clever internet marketing company to do it for you (cough again).

2 Bad Ways to Get the Word Out On the Internet

These methods are all about miracle cures. And they work about as well. If you want to choke to death trying the cure, by all means, try them both:

1. Buy or rent an e-mail list. In 13 years as an internet marketer, I’ve never seen a rented list perform. By ‘perform’, I mean ‘do better than if I stood in the street with a T-shirt advertising the product and let myself be run over’. Just don’t do it. Rented lists rarely work. They’re typically collected using methods that guarantee a horrifically bad response. Just don’t do it.
2. Banner ads. Banner ads are great branding tools. But they don’t sell bupkus. See my getting-run-over technique, above, for a superior alternative

The post 2 Sure Ways to Launch a New Product Online. And 2 Sure Ways to Blow It. appeared first on Portent.

Hi all. Dean Hunt is a Buzz Marketing expert who kindly offered to do a guest post on the subject. Read on…

Petition Marketing
Petition Marketing is one of the Internet’s most powerful, least used channels. With it, you can generate the kind of traffic that brings servers to their knees.
An Example
Once upon a time there was a socialite by the name of Paris Hilton. Paris seemed to show no respect for the law. One day Paris went to court, where a big powerful man told her that she had to go to prison for 45 days.
Paris was very sad, and she spent many days wandering the land pretending to be a better person. Paris paid lots and lots of money to her lawyers and marketing people, they got together and decided to create a petition called the “Free Paris Hilton Petition” (www.ipetitions.com/petition/PH21781/). 20,000 people gave their support to help prevent Paris from going to the big, nasty, smelly prison.
A few days later, a smart Internet entrepreneur created a petition entitled “Jail Paris Hilton”, he created a website (www.jailparishilton.com) the site says “She did the crime, she should do the time!”
People from all over the land agreed with Mr. Entrepreneur, and he got over 60,000 people to support his petition. His website was featured on numerous major news stations, and received millions of hits.
Mr. Smarty Pants Internet Entrepreneur now has a hugely popular website, and the names and email addresses of over 60,000 people. Not bad hey?
What would 60,000 extra subscribers do for your business?
Petitions are a huge publicity machine, but like every marketing technique there is a wrong and a right way to do it.
And there’s a secret: Create a petition with a negative slant.
Have you ever heard the phrase “Bad news travels faster than good news”?
It is true!
People who have a negative experience in a restaurant are likely to tell 5 times more people about it than if they had a great experience.
Don’t believe me? Well watch the national news tonight, and see what % of the stories are bad news. I bet it is 90%+
So to utilize the power of petitions, you need to take advantage of the fact that society is miserable. Harsh, but true. You need to have something with a negative slant. I believe this is why the “Jail Paris Hilton” website is so successful. People like to register their negative opinions about everything from sports to airlines. Let them vent.
We are becoming a world of armchair critics.
So feed that desire and find a negative slant.
Petitions are free and simple. Simply type “online petitions” into Google and you will see loads of free options. I use ipetitions.com but there are loads to choose from.
Dean runs his own blog at DeanHunt.com. You can contact him via e-mail at contact@deanhunt.com.

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