How ideas spread and culture eventually changes
Posted on | June 4, 2009 | No Comments
In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell wrote about how an bar fight might grow. Everybody has their own “tipping point” for how many people have to be fighting to engage themselves in the fight.
Something similar is seen in this video, from the Sasquatch Music Festival 2009, where this one guy just needs to dance. Two more guys come up to him, seemingly making fun of his dance moves. But then something happens (around 1.10 into the movie). More and more people join in, and all of a sudden, everybody has reached their tipping points of how many other people it takes on the “dance floor” to make them start dancing.
Take a look for yourself! This is how movements start, how ideas and phenomena spread in society, and how culture eventually changes. The more people in your surroundings that are acting in a specific way, the more legitimate it becomes to act the same. And before you know it, societal norms have changed.
Via Brains on Fire.
The next level of viral marketing
Posted on | May 17, 2009 | No Comments
I have previously written about Fixed and flexible networks.
By “flexible networks” I mean the kind of networks we have around us where we chose who will be included depending on the situation. For example, if we want to know something about a product we are thinking of buying, we ask people we will be able to contribute with information to make us make a better decision. The situation and what we want to achieve determines who we communicate with.
On the other hand, “fixed networks” are the kind of networks where we don’t determine who is included depending on the situation. These are the networks where information, independently of the content, are passed along to the same network. With the digitalization of media, and the more and more common “status updates” we make on Twitter, Jaiku, Facebook and more, it becomes more and more common to communicate with everybody in our network, independently of exactly what we are communicating.
At first I thought people would hold back a bit on what they published this way, that they would filter it more. Now it seems more and more obvious to me that this is not the case - people don’t filter very much at all. Status updates are about pretty much anything, private and not. Stuff is recommended, questions are asked about problems with products and services, and warnings about stuff that doesn’t live up to expectations are issued.
When the masses started communicating digitally, for example with email, marketers started talking about viral marketing and the possibility to spread word of mouth digitally, and get a lot more leverage that way.
These past few years it seems we have reached the next level of viral marketing. If someone previously passed something on to five or ten of their closer friends, the same thing is now published to 100 or more contacts on for example Facebook. This way, messages are relayed, and get spread even further, to new networks, through the strength of weak ties.
This effect gets even more power through different aggregation services which makes it possible to publish a status update on several sites at once, reaching different networks where we have different profiles.
Seems like viral marketing has reached the next level.
Tags: Mark Granovetter > status update > strength of weak ties
Be a grizzly
Posted on | May 13, 2009 | 2 Comments
“If you’re going to be a bear, be a Grizzly.”
Something Dan Heath, author of the great book “Made to Stick” said on The Fire Sessions 2009. Read it all on Brains On Fire. Really good!
SlapChop infomercial goes viral
Posted on | May 3, 2009 | 1 Comment
It’s really funny to see what happens sometimes when a commercial is taken online. Now, it doesn’t have to be an amazing commercial or anything. Something like the SlapChop (unless you have enormous amounts of time, just give it some 20 seconds - it’s like any average infomercial):
Not particularly interesting is it? But, then a citizen marketer called djsteveporter comes along and remixes it:
Pretty catchy, huh? And until today it has gotten more than 820 000 views - for free for the makers of SlapChop. Of course, this doesn’t happen often, but nonetheless, posting an ad online gives it a longer life than it would have had in paid media. And, it maximizes the possibility that something like this will happen. However, there is also a risk someone will create something making fun of the ad, the product or the business. As always, it’s about daring to let go of (the imagined) control over the brand.
Flutter is the new Twitter
Posted on | April 7, 2009 | 5 Comments
Flutter, poking fun at Twitter.
I wonder if this video has got something to do with Betfair.com? That’s where you end up if you type www.flutter.com in your browser.
Via Judith Wolst och TkJ.
What you measure influences how much word of mouth you get
Posted on | March 1, 2009 | No Comments
It is interesting to see how different rules within businesses shape the way people within them behave. It is even more interesting to see how what these result in over time.
Even though they might have a short term benefit, rules and incentives can hinder a business on a longer perspective. The boundaries an employee has to keep within, the reward systems and internal goals (within customer service for example x number of calls per hour) are not in accordance with higher level goals. It is very hard to provide “world class service” if you have strict rules on what you are allowed to do and what not and can do it only within, say six minutes, if not less.
What a business measures, evaluates and rewards influences…
… how employees act, which influences…
… how clients are treated, which influences…
… how satisfied customers are, which influences…
… how positive they become towards the business, which influences…
… how likely they are to spread positive word of mouth, which influences…
… how well the business will do in the future.
So, what is measured and evaluated within a business is extremely influential on how people act. If you are not rewarded for solving problems, the business will never be able to provide world class service. If you only get x minutes per customer, independently on whether you solve the problem or not, it gets even harder to reach that goal.
The culture within the business is very important for how employees behave, and it is often created by explicit rules within the business, like evaluations and reward systems.
With social media’s leverage effect on word of mouth (both positive and negative) it is now even more important to measure, evaluate and reward the right things - the things that over time can increase word of mouth.These are tough times for many businesses. Word of mouth costs nothing in media buying. But, it still requires efforts and investments to get this “free” marketing. Are you measuring the right things?
It’s not rocket science, but it’s worth thinking about it even more when costs are in focus.
Tags: measure
A great day!
Posted on | February 12, 2009 | 1 Comment
Today was a great day!
After a nice day at work, I went to Daytona Sessions, and listened to, Morris Packer, Katarina Graffman (from Inculture) and Umair Haque (also at Bubblegeneration). A very interesting afternoon, which also included the announcement of the blog awards YABA. After blogging on this blog since early October I am very proud to even have been nominated, and ended up on place 13 out of the 25 nominated in the marketing category. Thanks! =)
After that event, I went to meet the friends I work with on Animasher.com and found out that we were featured on a brazilian site which generated thousands of new visitors, both yesterday and today. Great news again!
On a roll…. =)
How to get word of mouth from non-customers
Posted on | February 12, 2009 | No Comments
The way customers are treated isn’t always the way you’d wish is was.
Sometimes it’s the wrong person in the wrong place. Sometimes it is strict rules about what you can or are allowed to do as employee. And sometimes it’s just a crass focus on costs. The reasons can be many, but the results are missed golden opportunities to create ambassadors for the brand. Possibilities to get customers to talk and recommend the products or services.
All customer contacts a business have are gifts. They are chances to go the extra mile, to really excel in the small details that are exactly what makes people want to talk (what Seth Godin calls “remarkable”), but that doesn’t cost that much.
“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption of our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider to our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us the opportunity to do so.”
- Mahatma Gandhi
Yes, that Gandhi!
When a business manages to create word of mouth it enters a great positive loop, where happy customers talk about the offer, new customers arrive, and these start talking too.
With the development of new communications channels on the Internet, like email, communities, consumer forums, blogs etc, the effect of word of mouth is multiplied. Customers can spread the word much further, without limitations in time and space. So, now there is an even greater reason to work hard to get customers to talk about the company.
But, as another result of this development, it is now also extremely easy to reach out to non-customers and create the same kind of positive feeling in them as in the ones who are already customers. A business can convey an image of being personal, interested in dialogue and wanting to take care of its customers. An image of a business that is interested in the customer, and not just the bottom line.
So, every time a company interacts with a customer it is a golden opportunity to create something worth talking about. And when someone writes or talks about a company online it is an opportunity to listen, to learn as a company, to engage in conversation.
It is now possible to create word of mouth from people who aren’t even customers (yet). As a bonus, present customers are reinforced in their beliefs that the company cares and wants their best.
And, the best part of all is that it isn’t at all hard to find these opportunities online and take advantage of the incredible leverage that the Internet can give. Offline it is practically impossible to get that leverage on conversations going on… … and it doesn’t scale. Online, it is extremely easy… … and it scales!
So far, not many companies are really taking advantage of this, which makes it even more advantageous for the ones that do!
MILFyourself - a spoof on ElfYourself
Posted on | February 11, 2009 | No Comments
OfficeMax got a huge success with ElfYourself (not active anymore) around christmas 2008 (193 million visits).
Being an obvious spoof, the site MILFYourself.com is trying to ride that popularity.
It is clear that they have not made the first of Kodak’s two mistakes on the MakeMeSuper campaign. They have managed to keep the viral loop intact - the link you send to friends works fine and they actually do a pretty good job of encouraging the users to send it on to more people as well as providing the link itself, for posting on blogs, communities and so on.
But, they seem to make Kodak’s second mistake too - not enabling people to create satellites of content by offering people to embed the video on other sites. This site is lacking that option too.
Here is my movie. Not the hottest MILF on the block maybe, but pretty decent! 
I can’t tell who’s behind the site, except that Nedia Investments seems to hold the copyrights.
Here’s an explanation of the slang term MILF.
How to get retweets
Posted on | February 3, 2009 | No Comments
CopyBlogger had a nice post, 5 Steps to Going Viral on Twitter, by Dan Zarella, which Mack on The Viral Garden followed up on, adding his own advice in How I get ReTweets on Twitter.
In short, Dans advice (some with a short comment by me):
1. Call to Action - The words “please” “check out” or “help me” seems to help.
2. Timing - between 9am and 6pm EST seems to work better.
I guess it is the same time interval in other time zones.
3. Links - about 70 % of retweets contains a link.
It feels like I am missing the comparison here. What I would like to see numbers on is how this compares to tweets in general. Retweets most probably have a higher percentage, but how much higher?
4. Social Proof - The likelihood of a tweet being retweeted increases dramatically each time it is retweeted.
This is almost exactly one of the things I wrote about in my previous post about retweets:
“…the retweet also reinforces the meme within the smaller network, as there is probably considerable overlap of connections within it. Receiving the tweet, and the following retweets, reinforces the meme through social proof. More people are paying attention to this particular idea, which makes us more likely to pay attention to it ourselves.”
5. Value - A lot of retweets are “How tos”, news, warnings, freebies and contests.
Mack’s tips are in essence these (comments by me):
1. I have a lot of followers. Which means that more people are going to see my tweets, and that obviously increases the chances of getting RTs.
2. I always link to my own blog posts while linking to other posts. This is done purposely. To me, it seems selfish to only link to my own content…
3. Topic matters. If I link to any post concerning Twitter or Social Media, odds are much higher that it will be RTed.
Context, hitting the right audience with the right message matters.
4. I often get requests from others to RT their post, and try to RT as many as I can. I’m happy to RT the posts as I can, I see it as my way of helping to ‘repay’ these people for RTing my links.
A perfect example of the rule of reciprocity in action.
5. I don’t purposely ‘try’ to get my links RTed.
It’s about valuable content, just like Dan also mentioned.
You should read both Dan’s and Mack’s posts for the fuller picture. Also take a look at Dan’s post on the ReTweetability Metric - connected to what I wrote about a lot of followers and authority.
Retweets are extremely interesting to watch, as they really are memes that have proven themselves to have viral potential.
Tags: microblogging > retweets > twitter