Monday, August 04, 2014

Leveraging the Virality of the World Wide Web...

There is so much talk about leveraging the web and the social networks to make content go viral...while we see several instances of things going viral - ranging from Ellen DeGeneres' Oscars selfie to The Discovery Channel's - The World Is Just Awesome inspirational video the mechanics to make it all come together still seem to be unclear...

So What Makes Online Content Go Viral?
A recent research study co-authored by Jonah Berger (Assistant Professor of Marketing at Wharton Business School) highlights three factors that make content go viral...

1. Positive content has a higher potential for going viral than negative content
2. Content that evokes high arousal emotions e.g. anger, inspiration, awe —positive or negative—is more viral than content without emotion.
3. Practically useful content get’s shared - content which people feel could help their friends and has imbedded actions/next steps for the reader!

Given the three steps above - given our ability to influence what goes viral...are marketers being strategic enough about spoon feeding our readers to make the content viral?

No comments: