720STRATEGIES

720 Blog

Return to 720 Blog

When I'm not buried in my laptop (which is a rare occurrence), I enjoy a good read, and the two latest books I'm a fan of are The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell and Linked by Albert-László Barabási. Both present interesting theories on social networking, shedding light on the current phenomenon we find ourselves in the midst of, with the likes of Facebook, MySpace, and Friendster. Every organization that has an online presence, in an effort to highlight their issue, needs to understand the core principles behind social networks and how to leverage them.

A tipping point as defined by Wikipedia is:

"the event of a previously rare phenomenon becoming rapidly and dramatically more common."

The obvious examples of this being fashion trends, or product fads, but there are other tipping points that are more pertinent to the organizations and individuals we work with. I'm talking about viral videos, and the explosive effect six degrees of e-mail forwarding can have.

Within an hour of posting a video on YouTube and e-mailing it to ten of my friends, if they forward it to ten friends, those friends repeat the same favor, and this cycle repeats itself ad infinitum, one can easily see how this video rapidly becomes seen by an impressive number of people. Social networking and the Internet has lowered the bar substantially, making it much easier to achieve this tipping point, which leads me to my second point: the power of weak ties.

Barabási explains the strength inherent in weak social ties, comparing them to a person's strong ties by saying:

"Weak ties play a crucial role in our ability to communicate with the outside world ... They move in the same circles we do and are inevitably exposed to the same information. To get new information we have to activate our weak ties. The weak ties ... obtain their information from different sources than our immediate friends."

Viral videos and the explosive popularity of certain websites (specifically social networking sites) owe their astounding success to these weak ties. Current social theory claims that weak social ties are responsible for the transmission of information through most social networks in society. This is the opposite of Groupthink or yes men. Weak ties enable the infusion of new ideas into a small social circle. Sometimes these ideas are conflicting or contrary to what the recipient believes, but sometimes the idea is embraced and shared with the rest of the recipient's social group, as in the case with viral content.

In the Tipping Point, there are three types of people that produce tipping points: Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen. Connectors are those that have vast networks of contacts, often filled with weak social ties. Mavens are the thought leaders and are well respected by their contacts for their knowledge and expertise. Salesmen are the extroverted marketers of ideas in social networks. For an idea to explode in popularity you need a respected Maven to be the thought leader and discover it, a Salesman to pitch it and sell it to his connections, and a Connector to pick up on it and spread it exponentially to their vast network. This is the truly simplified explanation of how web content goes viral.

Word-of-mouse is the ticket to a successful online advocacy campaign. An e-mail list of 10,000 or 100,000 certainly is a big plus, but that's just the starting point. In that list you potentially have hundreds or more Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen that you can hopefully mobilize for your cause, to help spread the word to their own personal social networks and with the bar substantially lowered by the Internet and social networking sites, it's tremendously easy to transmit information across weak social ties. The potential exists to easily expose your issue to hundreds of thousands or even millions of people with the right mix of creative content, strategy, and social networking. This is what we're talking about when we talk about exponential influence.

Comments

There are no comments