Is great to see scientific research being done on social media, viral videos, and marketing in general (see previous post on the New Science of Viral Ads). Problem is, many research papers contradict each other. A recent study published on Marketing Journal titled “Seeding Strategies for Viral Marketing: An Empirical Comparison” (requires registration), by Oliver Hinz, Bernd Skiera, Christian Barrot, & Jan U. Becker, tries to get some of the contradictions resolved when it comes to what makes something “go viral“.
4 Critical Factors for Viral Success
According to the authors, there are four critical factors for viral marketing success:
1: Content, or the attractiveness of a message makes it memorable
2: The structure of the social network
3: The behavioral characteristics of the recipients and their incentives for sharing the message
4: The seeding strategy, which determines the initial set of targeted consumers chosen by the initiator of the viral marketing campaign
The authors attribute the fourth component, Seeding Strategy, the higher weight. It’s all about who you are sending your video to, they say.
“Seeding the “right” consumers yields up to eight times more referrals than seeding the “wrong” ones” – Hinz, Skiera, Barrot, Becker
So how do you go about “seeding” it right? Here’s where many researchers disagree. There are typically three types of people you can target:
- Hubs: well-connected people with a high number of connections to others
- Fringes: poorly connected people
- Bridges: those who can connect two otherwise unconnected parts of the network
Hubs tend to be better informed because of their social links and they can also influence their networks (hey, if I got this from Bob it must be good!). However, Hubs may not be optimal channels because if the person that acts as a hub doesn’t like or doesn’t agree with the content, they will not pass it on to their network. As big targets for new content, hubs are constantly bombarded with information and therefore may ignore or not see your new content which will prevent it from being spread.
Adoption of a new idea can then start at the “fringes” and make its way through the network. It has also been argued that fringes are more easily influenced than hubs and therefore may be good targets for spreading content. Bridges, for their ability to connect different areas of a network have also been targets because they can influence a portion of the network otherwise immune to the ‘viral’ content you have created.
The Optimal Seeding Strategy
In their research, the authors encountered four studies that recommend seeding hubs, three recommend fringes, and one recommends bridges. No wonder there is so much confusion when it comes to social media and viral videos! They then conducted experiments to prove those theories to the test to see which one would emerge as the winning seeding strategy.
The result was that “Marketers can achieve the highest number of referrals, across various settings, if they seed the message to hubs or bridges“. They also go on to say that “companies should use social network information about mutual relationships to determine their viral marketing strategy”.
Check out a summary of the study and results published by the authors on SlideShare (link below):
The Social Network
Understanding the social structure of potential networks is an important part when planning your social strategy. It pays off then for companies to mine the data they already have about their customers in order to determine the best people to seed your campaign. If high-connected people are picked to seed the campaign, the probability that it will spread is greatly increased.
Finally, it remains to be seen whether Facebook and other social networks will start playing a very active role in providing companies with detailed network information in order to help with their seeding efforts. Companies already have access to demographics, is just a matter of expanding the data set and, of course, avoiding potential privacy concerns.
Posted by Daniel Kuperman 
If before marketers had the challenging job of gathering data to analyze campaign effectiveness, now the opposite might be true. Email marketing, marketing automation, web analytics, CRM, and the myriad of software now permeating marketing organizations gives us more data than we can process in a timely fashion.
Looking for a recipe to get your new video to go viral? In a recent Harvard Business Review article “
1. On-Hold Messages: Ditch the on-hold music and the typical sales pitch for something your customers, prospects, and partners will actually enjoy listening to. Customize the message for each department. Tech support is the low-hanging fruit where you could have a message talking about how to make the most of your product, give a tip that will help them with the product, or talk about a solution for a problem people have been encountering lately. Bonus points if you can actually get customers to ask to put them back on hold to finish listening to the message.
2. Invoices: You may have tried or seen the traditional “invoice stuffers” that come in the form of promotions, new credit card offers, and other junk you typically disregard. In the B2B world this is a lost opportunity, because you could be sending quality content with your invoice (or on the invoice itself) that might get the customer’s attention and continue building trust. Bonus points if you send content that makes the customer smile. Paying bills is no fun, how about making their day a little bit better?
3. Post-Sales or Post-Support Surveys: When you send customers surveys about their sales or support experience with your company, make sure you reward their feedback accordingly. The best way is to give them something they don’t expect and that they will have use for. Starbucks cards can become expensive quickly, so why not give them great content at the end of the survey? Bonus points if you give them a summary (or teaser) before they start the survey and the full thing as they finish it.
4. Welcome Email or Letter: Typical emails or letters welcoming new customers after they purchase a product or service fall short of delivering anything of value. Why not use this opportunity to present the newly acquired customer with great content they can use and share? Bonus points if you customize the content to what they have actually purchased (canned “welcome to the XYZ family” messages are disregarded as junk).
5. Holiday Card: Whether you do a physical or virtual card, email, video, etc during the holidays and send out to customers, you should take this opportunity to give them something different and that will increase their trust in you and your company. Show off your company’s personality, who works there, put a face behind the communication customers usually receive from you. Bonus points if it entices customers to share with others.
6. Confirmation Emails: When someone makes a purchase, or when you send out shipping notifications do you optimize the message for great content or leave it as the standard boring text file? Use this opportunity to engage the customer and increase their trust. Bonus points if you can provide dynamic content based on their actual purchase, shipping status, or whatever transactional message you are sending.
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