Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, educators, journalists, general public.

We have a false belief that the Internet make something go viral. Whether something ultimately goes viral hinges mostly on human factors, and not Pinterest or Twitter.

People have been sharing for thousands of years. What’s new is the idea of “viral,” which is really just word of mouth (the oldest and most effective form of marketing) scaled to a massive degree. Plus, only 7 percent of all word-of-mouth marketing happens online.

Jonah Berger, author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On, goes deep into six factors which collectively make the acronym “STEPPS”:

Social currency

1People talk about and share because it will make them look good to their peers. Along the way, we share the brands that helped make them look good.

Triggers

2What’s top of mind will be on the tip of our tongue. The more we think about something, the more likely we’d talk about it. For example, if I say “green eggs and____,” you would likely respond “ham.”

What’s at work here is your brains natural auto-complete feature, where information can be quickly accessed with a trigger. This is why closed questions often get more engagement than open questions.

The more you listen to your community, the better you’ll know the triggers. What are they talking about now? Something newsworthy? Something controversial?

One easy way to leverage triggers is to develop an editorial calendar around known notable calendar days, as Nancy suggests. Then, brainstorm a few messaging ideas around these dates.

Emotions

3People only share when their emotions are activated. Reason only comes into the picture (if at all) after the action is taken.

The New York Times did a study on emotions and sharing, and it found that the top three emotions were anger, awe and anxiety. And more specifically, it found that the power of an emotion is what drives sharing.

For example, sadness rarely encourages sharing simply because it has very little power (low energy). Righteous anger, on the other hand, will get 1 million signatures on a petition!

Public

4People are influenced by the actions of others they see. If you’re like me, you never eat at an empty restaurant. Instead, you’ll walk an extra block to put your name on a waiting list, exclaiming to your data, “the food must be good with this long of a wait!”

You can easily demonstrate social proof with social media and your website. For example, knowing that you have 50,000 email subscribers will influence whether I subscribe as well. But it won’t if it’s not public.

Practical

5People share things that are useful to others.

Many behavioral economists believe that sharing useful tips is hard-wired into our evolution. If we go back in time a few thousand years, I might be telling you about a good fishing spot, in hopes that you might return the favor.

This reciprocity continues to be a central part of who we are.

You can grow and nurture your community by being useful to them in a variety of ways. For example, the ASPCA has this handy Facebook app that educates pet owners about poisons (shown at top).

The key here is to add value to community in a way that’s practical and immediate.

Stories

6Like reciprocity, storytelling is also hard-wired in human beings. Stories help create a vessels for an idea so that it’s passed along more easily. Stories should have a beginning, middle, and end, or at least a before and after.

A great example of great storytelling is Jonah’s infograph for his book. Enjoy!

The post Six human factors that influence virality appeared first on Socialbrite.

Uncovering the mystery of virality

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, marketers, Web publishers, video producers.

That’s right. A video of goats yelling like humans gets 12 million YouTube views in a month.

When nonprofits ask me how to create viral content, I talk about videos like the one above, which probably makes them wonder why they hired me.

The truth is, I have no idea what makes anything go viral. The common ingredients of viral content are well documented, but there seems to be something magically delicious and fantastic that’s hard to pinpoint. And that gets me excited!

The science behind viral content

Scientific research on what makes content go viral has found:

• Length matters. Longer articles tend to be shared far more often than short ones
• Emotions matter. You share content that makes you feel anxiety, awe and anger far more than you share content that makes you feel sad.
• Controversy matters. Blogs posts written about controversial topics get twice as many comments.
• Being useful matters. Content that is interesting or has immediate utility gets shared more.
• Humor matters. Humor is the single most common element of most viral ads. So shut up and be funny!

The viral content checklist

There’s also this amazingly useful “viral checklist” from Carson Ward:

• Did you sufficiently cover the topic? Is it long enough? (24)
• Does the content inspire a high-energy emotion like awe (16), anger (18), or anxiety (18)?
• Did your tone convey emotion? (12)
• Is it practically useful? (16)
• Is it interesting? (14)
• Is it surprising? (8)
• Does the author have fame/credibility? (8)
• If it’s supposed to be funny, is it actually funny? Are you sure your friends aren’t just being nice? (?)

(Next to each question there’s a maximum score to help prioritize the most important factors.)

The fact that the answers to these questions are largely subjective complicates matters that much more. You see, human beings are infinitely complex and dynamic.

So even the best attempt at creating viral content might still end up falling flat.

The secret behind viral content

The secret is that everyone is just as befuddled as you are. And yes, the experts are confused, too (even though many won’t admit it).

But confusion can be immensely beneficial.

Confusion is proof that you’re seeking, stretching, trying, testing and learning, which is way more interesting than a video of goats yelling like humans.

What do you think are some critical elements of virality?

The post The secret behind creating viral content appeared first on Socialbrite.