Want Your Content to Go Viral? Enter The E-Maven.

In a world in which ‘viral marketing’ is all the rage, why is it that so few academics and practitioners can actually tell us why we forward some electronic content and not others?

Apply a bit of common sense and you’re likely to find that ‘viral’ content tends to be funny, emotionally arousing or stimulating. Which is all well and good. But previous research has shown that beyond great content, it’s your ability to identify (and target) ‘market mavens’ that can make or break your marketing campaign [1].

So when it comes to marketing and e-WOM, how do you pick an e-maven out of the crowd?

Why do we share?

In a bid to find out, two researchers from the US issued a 30-minute online survey to 582 undergrads, to research who amongst them would forward content and why [2]. Based on the FIRO theory of interpersonal behavior [3], they hypothesized that our desire to share content stems from four main needs:

1. to belong to a group
2. to express our individuality
3. to be altruistic
4. for personal growth

What they actually found was quite different.

How to spot an e-maven

E-mavens, it transpires, do have several things in common – here’s how you can spot them.

1. Unique

People who forward and disseminate online content often do so as a way to express their own individuality. By showing that they’re willing to stand out from the crowd, e-mavens are often judged by others as more influential.

2. Altruistic

The researchers found a positive relationship between e-WOM and altruism. This is possibly due to the fact that altruistic acts often result in affection, which in a virtual context translates as positive comments, RTs, likes and shares.

3. Content-hungry

The third finding was that people who consume a lot of online content also tend to forward more of it to their social network (it suddenly makes sense why I’m constantly being bombarded by cute animal videos by my aunt).

Beware the anti-share

Surprisingly, the study also found that the need to belong didn’t significantly influence the forwarding of online content, possibly because we can get this need met more fully from social networking sites instead.

Another fascinating insight was that people who strongly value personal growth were less likely to forward online content, since it's likely that they engage in other activities as a means to gain social capital.

So, in conclusion...

Given the sheer mountain of clutter we face any time we try to launch a marketing campaign online, understanding why people share content, and who the key influencers are, can dramatically improve our chances of success.

If you want your content to go viral, not only do you have to make it sticky, but you have to appeal to the e-mavens in your audience. Then, it’s a question of helping them do two simple things: stand out from the crowd, and helping them to help their peers.

If you can help them achieve this, you might just find you have a viral campaign on your hands.

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[1] M. Laroche, F. Pons, N. Zgolli, M. C. Cervellon, and C. Kim (2003). A model of consumer response to two retail sales promotion techniques. Journal of Business Research, 56(7) pp. 513 - 522.

[2] J.Y.C. Ho and M. Dempsey (2010). Viral marketing: Motivations to forward online content. Journal of Business Research, 63, pp. 1000 -1006.

[3] W. C. Schutz (1996). FIRO: A Three Dimensional Theory of Interpersonal Behavior. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.