Achieving Social Media Virality has been the holy grail of social media marketing ever since the advent of digital media. Maybe even before that. For the uninitiated and the inhabitants of the fabled lands of “under the rock”, a viral marketing campaign is a business strategy in which we leverage the use of organic social channels to maximize the reach of the communication message. This is often achieved through activating the consumers themselves to act as the propagators of the message, much like how an ‘infected cell’ often is instrumental in the spread of the ‘infection’.
There have been scores of models and hacks on how to achieve social media virality and attempts have been made by many marketers and behavioural scientists to objectify its repeatability. But probably none have come closer than Professor Jonah Berger, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Johan Berger, an expert on word of mouth, viral marketing, social influence, and how products, ideas, and behaviors catch on defines the STEPPS model of Social Media Virality in his book Contagious: Why Things Catch On. This model makes a very resilient attempt on understanding –
Why do people talk about and share certain things rather than others?
Why do some products catch on, some ideas diffuse, and some online content go viral?
Let’s take a look at the 6 STEPPS Model of Social Media Virality and see how it can help your brand’s communications go viral!
Social Currency
People care about how they are perceived by others. They want to be looked at as smart, cool, and in-the-know. Social currency is the idea that an individual’s social status is tied to the information he or she controls. Information that increases a person’s uniqueness, especially in conversation, is highly sought after and readily transmitted. By creating novel and interesting content, we create the next trend that our consumers have to share with their friends.
Triggers
Triggers are words, phrases, images and sounds that are closely tied to a message. For example, If I say “Kya chal raha hai?” your mind immediately finishes the phrase and thinks “Fogg”. Manufacturing triggers is possible if we keep our message and trigger on top of mind and tip of tongue for an extended period of time. Common word associations can be used to create easy trigger words and with experimentation, repetition and some amount of luck your content can achieve social media virality.
Emotion
People share things they care about. More importantly, people share things that they thing other people care about too. Awe and inspirations are the most heavily-shared emotions, but in general, any high-arousal emotion has a higher tendency for sharing. For example we constantly see people sharing content about movies on social causes (happy end of the spectrum) to videos on Yulin dog festival (The sad spectrum) even they don’t really have any control of the events. So, don’t worry about giving some of your social media posts an emotional bias on social media.
Public
Content that’s “built to show” is “built to grow.” If there’s any reason why a user might avoid sharing a piece of content, whether it’s language choice, content, or otherwise inappropriate, this can significantly impact sharing behavior on a large scale. The more public something is, the more likely people will imitate it. Design products and initiatives that advertise themselves and create some visible behavioural residue. For example, short videos about visibly good food, cute animals and innovative uses of products have good viral reach on social media channels.
Practical Value
People share “news you can use,” like useful, practical advice. People enjoy helping others; it creates a social bond between us by letting the other person know that we care. It’s important to note how we package our practical value advice: it should be tidbits, a paragraph or two at most, rather than a dissertation. Social media or not, creating and seeding communication based on practical value is of utmost importance to generate real world and social word-of-mouth about you brand or product. Highlight incredible value and expertise so that people can easily pass it on.
Stories
Information travels under the guise of idle chatter. When your brand exists in a story that can’t be told without the brand, and when that story shares well in chatting, you’ve got a hit on your hands. Stories are vessels – so build a Trojan Horse. Create a narrative or story that people want to tell which carries your idea along for the ride. For example a post on great your dog-biscuits brand is probably not going to find many takers, but attaching the same product to the video of an actual dog with a name & story is going to find it’s own niche of rabid contagions!