Spreading Ideas through Social Media? How?
- Li Ling
- Feb 11, 2019
- 3 min read
Read on to find out my opinions on how ideas spread through Social Media and which marketing theory best support it.
In today's world, Social Media Marketing changes the way businesses promote their brands, products and new ideas. We will be exploring how does ideas spread through Social Media through 3 different theories which are based on Message, Network and People Characteristics.
Jonah Berger? Malcom Gladwell? Seth Godin?
Network Characteristics - Malcom Gladwell
Pareto Principles proposed by Malcom Gladwell says that 80% of your results will be produced by 20% of participants. Whether an idea or campaign goes viral depends on whether those 20% of people with rare social gifts are involved. These 20% of people are Social Media Influencers, namely the Connectors, Maven, and Salespersons.
Connectors
Based on 6 Degrees of Separation, connectors are people who have large amount of ties and are well connected with everyone. Examples are Celebrities or Authority Influencers. Due to the large amount of followers, messages spread by connectors have a higher chance of it going viral.
Here, we have 2 examples of how Connectors contribute to Viral Campaigns and spread messages.
Rebecca Black - Friday
Rebecca's Youtube Video was uploaded days before it went viral. However, it went viral not because it was a success, but because Michael J Nelson who has close to 19K followers on twitter, twitted about how bad the music video is. The tweet went out to all his followers and then to his followers' followers, thus leading to a viral effect. This leads to Rebecca receiving hates, affecting her reputation and career.
It hurts when you are out of luck, even after you did your best
Citizen Queen - Never Enough
Amber who is an American-born Chinese, Member of K-Pop Girl Group Fx posted an Instagram's story about Citizen Queen's cover of "Never Enough", a viral song from the movie "The Greatest Showman", sharing this beautiful piece of cover to her followers. Being an American-born Chinese who is currently an active Solo Singer promoting in Asia, Amercia and Europe, she has a staggering 5.3 million followers on her Instagram account. Hence, she is able to reach out to audience from across the world giving Citizen Queen a slight shout-out in their career.
Maven
Often known as "Shopping Experts" are people who collects and distribute information. Their main intention is to help others by spreading useful, practical information instead of persuading consumers to buy. Hence, Word-of-Mouth from Maven are more trustworthy than some Connectors.
Meejmuse - Best of Beauty Makeup
Above shows the full video of Meejmuse's latest Makeup reviews in 2018. Being an Australian-born Korean Beauty Influencer who is an advocate of using skincare, makeup or hair products which are scentless, animal-cruelty free and paraben-free. She stands firms on giving her true opinions about different products, even if it means being honest about what she dislikes on a sponsored post.
In addition, she often bought newly in-trends products with her own pocket money to try them out before giving reviews. With 484K subscribers on her Youtube Channel, she gained loyal subscribers as she spreads useful and practical beauty advises and was seen as a credible beauty influencer.
Girls do check her out, trust me she's trustworthy!
Salespersons
Are persuaders who motivate consumers to take actions to purchase. Below is a snapshot of how businesses like Shopsassydream takes on the role of Salesperson. The main idea behind them is to persuade consumers to purchase clothes from their brand, therefore they have regular Q&A sessions to build stronger relationships with their target market and to find out their needs and wants.
Shopsassydream
In conclusion, out of the 3 theories, the main reason why theory of Malcom Gladwell best describe the spread of ideas through Social Media is because weak social ties enables us to reach a wide range of audience. More often, half the friends we followed on Social Media are Acquaintances. Information shared by Acquaintances or Social Media Influencers exposed us to things we are unaware of and this is how new ideas or products went viral with the help of Social Media Influencers.
What do you think? Do you agree too?
@Marc Ryan Lim I feel that all 6 principles are equally important to be honest! Without any of them contents will not be viral! However, I do believe that luck play a part in viral marketing too!
WOW WOW WOW! Which of the 6 principles you feel is the most important ?
@weiheng fung I personally feels that "Water Salad" produce by Coke Japan is pretty interesting~ I wouldn't have believe that Coke Japan actually comes out with drinks like that because they are seen as a company who often succeed in coming out with drinks consumers like and well-thought marketing campaigns. I guess having them come out with a new products every 3 weeks really squeezes their brain juices dry xd
@Ng WanLing Yes, definitely! Social Media can be considered as an "in" thing. Imagine how excluded from the world you will be and how your friends probably judge you when they realized you don't use social media!
@shumin_sm Thankyou for your comments! Glad that the examples were easy to understand!
i agree with malcolm's theory too! all the examples listed were relatable as well, thamks for this informative post! keep it up :)
Wow! I really liked the examples that you gave. It's easy to understand and relatable as well. (: