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Jim Calhoun is the CEO/Founder of Popular Media and a Silicon Valley veteran. Before founding PopularMedia, Jim was a co-founder of CustomerClick LLC, a multi-million dollar direct marketing firm whose clients include Yahoo!, UnitedHealthGroup, and ABC Television. Previously, Jim served as Vice President of Products at NetObjects, Inc. He is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

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Viral Psychology 101: Exploring the Social Underpinnings to Unlock Word-of-Mouth Secrets

Written on
November 17th 2006
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by Jim Calhoun  |
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HOW TO ASK

Social Modeling
Want me to do something? Show me ten other people doing it, and I’ll probably follow along. In real life, we figure what to do by watching the people around us. Online, we look for other cues to guide our behavior. So if you have a “Share” button, follow YouTube’s example and display the number of times an item has been shared. Highlight the “Most Shared” content. If I see proof that other people are telling their friends about something, I’m more likely to do the same. Like seeding a tip jar with dollar bills, you can use things like ratings, visitor statistics, and consumer-generated reviews to drive friend-to-friend referrals.

Anchoring
When trying to come up with a number, whether deciding how much money to donate or guessing how many pennies are in a jar, we automatically skew our answers in the direction of any reference number provided. The reference number acts as a mental “anchor point” — even if we know it’s been arbitrarily chosen. So as long as you’re asking someone to “tell a friend” about you, ask them to tell five friends. Or provide ten text boxes in which to enter addresses. Heck, give them a big text field with instructions to “enter up to 50 e-mail addresses at a time.”

Priming
Have someone alphabetize a list of synonyms for “politeness” and they’ll generally be more patient with the next few people they encounter. Have them alphabetize synonyms for hostility, and the opposite effect occurs. You can “prime” people to behave a certain way by getting them to think about related ideas or behaviors, even if it’s just by showing them the words. Look for places to prime things like sharing, connecting, and keeping in touch.

TOOLS TO PROVIDE

Aided Recall
From memory, list everyone in your address book whose name contains the letter “e”. Now try it again with your address book open. Odds are you found more matching names the second time.

The same thing happens when you ask people to type their friends’ addresses into a typical “tell a friend” form. They’ll start with the list of people they correspond with often, and choose just a few of those, forgetting about Aunt Sue and other “infrequent contacts,” who are often ideal recipients of these messages. You’ll get more referrals (and avoid typos) by providing a tool that integrates with users’ existing e-mail programs so they can choose friends directly from their address books.

Reasons to Share
Ask yourself “Why would someone share this with their friends?” Now make sure that these benefits are as obvious to your visitors as they are to you. Does your product have a social aspect — i.e., I will enjoy it more when my friends join in? If you just want me to share an offer, what’s in it for me? What’s in it for my friend? After all, she’ll judge me by the quality of content I introduce her to. Consider the reasons from both points of view: the sender AND the recipient. Above all else, respect the value of your customer’s social network.

There’s much more to these concepts than I’ve written here, and I do recommend reading up on any techniques you plan to implement. Review the theories, and don’t be afraid to test a few different approaches when putting theories into action. Most importantly, respect the people who participate in your programs. If people feel that you’re trying to manipulate them, they’ll leave and never look back. But if you offer a good value proposition and take the time to make it easy and appealing, you’ll get all the word-of-mouth you need.



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Reader Comments.

Thank you Jim for this excellent primer — a true 101 on WOM. Only at adotas.com do I find the inner workings of the cutting edge strategies and tactics in new media. Kudos and best wishes for a Happy Holiday!

Posted by art | 11:22 am on November 17, 2006.

Great read Jim!

Posted by PubIncome | 5:17 pm on November 17, 2006.

“flys” –> you catch more “flys” with honey…

Why do so many create viral campaigns that aren’t participant based? My opinion: many marketing firms are build on people who are good at producing content. They forget that it’s the fun part of their job that they need to start ‘crowdsourcing’.

Posted by darius | 8:06 pm on November 24, 2006.

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