What Makes it Go?

May 28

What Makes it Go?

by Alison Byrne Fields
Category: Digital Influence, Word of Mouth Marketing

On Friday, Mark Goren at Transmission Content + Creative wrote a post about The Early-In Loop, the folks who find out about cool content on the web and then “generously” pass it along to others. In response, Douglas Walker at Webtalker wrote a post about WHY it is that we share things with others, generating the following list:

Geek Cred - When I share something with another and it is found to be valuable then my â€œgeek credâ€ goes up and thus I become a bigger influencer to that person, increase trust and, feel better about myself in the process.
Rewarding the Good - When I see something I like, agree with, or find some type of value in, I like to share it with others as a way to reward the creator. Conversely, I will ignore bad content so as not to continue its spread.
Verifying Judgment - I may not be sure how I feel about something, so I send it to friends or blog it to find out what others think and confirm whether my initial opinion was correct.
To say Hi - Sometimes I might use stuff as a way to reconnect with someone if I don’t have anything else worth saying and just use the content as a relevant bridge.
Pay Back - Some people are good at sending me stuff, so when I come across something relevant to their interests, I might send it along to return the favour.
Badge - I might send something out in the same way that I wear a funky t-shirt, because it says something about me or what I am into.

The answer to that question — why do people forward/share content — is ongoing in our work. A video, web site, blog post, photo, podcast, del.icio.us tag, whatever isn’t a success story — isn’t SOCIAL media — unless it’s remarkable enough that people (and, specifically, the people you are trying to reach) share it with others. When clients or colleagues ask us to produce “viral” content, the content part is easy, it’s the viral that can occasionally be a bit of a mystery.

I agree with all of Walker’s reasons for why he sends things along; all of them are familiar and applicable to me. But, are there other reasons that aren’t listed? Here are my six additions to Walker’s list of six, most of which are less about being “in the know” and more about my personal relationships — which might, therefore, apply to consumers that we are trying to reach through our Digital Influence strategies:

Common Ground - I send things along to people because I want to affirm our commonalities: things that make us laugh, things that infuriate us, things that make us think.
Reveal - I’ve sent blog posts from my own blog to people who didn’t previously know I had a blog in order to tell them about it. It’s generally very matter of fact: I’m sending them a post that is relevant to them (or, like Walker, gives me a chance to “say hi”), but the underlying message is “I haven’t told you about this before.” Not everyone has a blog, but there are other things that someone could reveal about themselves by sharing something they found online.
Thinking of You - I send things to people â€” a week, a month, a day, an hour - after having a conversation with them to show them that I am thinking of them or that our conversation inspired me to learn more about something.
Follow Up - Similar to Walker’s “To Say Hi,” I send relevant links to clients or colleagues as way to follow up from conversations to keep the ball rolling and to demonstrate my value as a resource.
Showing Off - I share things from my ego feed or about things that I worked on with colleagues or friends. But, when a site offers me the opportunity to create a widget or participate in a co-creation exercise, I also share the products that are generated because I think they are cool because my hands are all over it.
Welcome - Similar to “Common Ground,” I send things to new friends or colleagues as a way to show them that I see them as being part of my circle, to affirm our connection.

Okay, now it’s your turn. Think about the last thing you passed along â€” an email you forwarded, a news story you shared, a del.icio.us tag you linked to for someone else, a blog post you emailed to a colleague. Why did YOU send it along? You don’t need to come up with six (although you are welcome to do so), but how about just one?

This entry was posted on Monday, May 28th, 2007 at 8:03 am and is filed under Digital Influence, Word of Mouth Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

23 COMMENTS
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23 Responses to “What Makes it Go?”

Mark Goren Says:
May 28th, 2007 at 8:18 am
I really love how this idea is being expanded upon, Alison. Thank you for taking the time to build on the idea.

As I commented on Douglas’ post, unless you have the information early, you can’t pass it along with any value. If it feels like a long time since you are exposed to something when you receive it for a second or third time, there is a little bit of a â€œwhere have you been?â€ feeling towards the sender that comes into play. And that’s what got me thinking about the value of being early-in.
Transmission Content + Creative, Mark Goren, New Marketing Coach » Blog Archive » The Early-In Loop Says:
May 28th, 2007 at 8:24 am
[...] UPDATE 2: Alison Byrne Fields at 360 Digital Influence picked up on Douglas’ post and builds on his list. Here are her six additions to the list of why people forward stuff. Very interesting insights here. [...]
Alison Byrne Fields Says:
May 28th, 2007 at 8:34 am
Mark, You’re definitely right. I like to share things that I find online via my personal blog (through my del.icio.us tags) and I’ll admit that I cringe a little when I realize that I have just found something that might be a month or more old.
Douglas Walker Says:
May 28th, 2007 at 8:54 am
Great stuff, Alison. There may be a little bit of overlap in places, but you are definitely extending the conversation and adding a lot of depth, particularly in the social connections area. I am really happy where this thinking is going and hopefully it will continue…
Webwalker » The Early in Loop and Why people forward stuff Says:
May 28th, 2007 at 8:59 am
[...] Update: Alison over at 360 Digital Influence (Ogilvy PR Blog) has really expanded in the social connections area of why people forward stuff. I think we can qualify this as a genuine “meme-in-training” now, The Six Reasons I Forward meme. Hope to see it continue. [...]
Alison Byrne Fields Says:
May 28th, 2007 at 9:16 am
Douglas, I hope you think I sufficiently acknowledged the overlap where there was some. Would love to see this keep going. I mean, it would be sadly ironic if it didn’t, wouldn’t it?
Andre Blackman Says:
May 28th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
I’m always eager to pass along information that I think would be beneficial to my colleagues/friends/family. The information is usually related to the “reveal” or “thinking of you” reasons. Amongst the tsunami of information that rolls into our lives via the internet, I can usually find something of practical value that I want others to make use of.
Bryan Callahan Says:
May 28th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Alison, this is a great conversation. Anything that gets us talking about the ethnography of the Web is a great conversation.

When I think about social motivations for sharing, it takes me back to everything I learned about “gift exchange” when I was studying cultural anthropology in grad school.

We exchange “gifts” (anything from food, to clothing, to suggestions for a great restaurant) to build relationships and cement relationships with people we value (for their friendship, for their knowledge, and - yes - for what they can do for us in return). We also exchange gifts to create community and establish mutually beneficial channels of communication, and I think that the whole online community notion of “co-creation” is fundamentally connected to the urge to be social, to be “linked-in,” so to speak.

It’s also important to understand the distinction between this type of gift exchange and good old capitalism, which tends to establish a real and fixed value for items that we exchange with one another through monetary transactions. If we exchange things for money, the sense of reciprocal social obligation fades away. The people who receive these purchased things from us no longer feel that they “owe” us because they have “paid” us. So I think that one of the key factors that distinguishes “social media” from “paid media” and online consumerism is the sense of continuing relationship and social bond.

Corporations invest millions every year trying to win the brand loyalty of their customers by making efforts to convince customers that they are buying a social “relationship” in addition to a specific product. And the free-wheeling gift exchange of online communities is really hard to replicate if you are a corporation.

Finally, I want to direct your attention to today’s Washington Post, which features an article on scientists who may have identified the locus of altruism in our brains. It turns out that altruism may not be the lofty, frontal lobe moral virtue that we might have suspected. When people are encouraged to be altruistic under observation, the reptilian areas of the brain that control basic urges for food and sex light up. So sharing may be one of the fundamental guilty pleasures of life. An ur-motivation. Share on!
Mark Goren Says:
May 28th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
Wow, I’m so glad to see where this conversation is headed. What I find so interesting about what you have to say, Bryan, comes in your last point about how altruism is a basic urge. Could it be that it’s just part of the whole “wanting to be accepted” need that we all feel â€“ and that forming relationships is a natural extension of that need?

Thoughts?
Bryan Callahan Says:
May 29th, 2007 at 10:02 am
Hi, Mark. What struck me as really thought-provoking about the Post article is that it suggests that sharing and altruism are a basic biological element that we have in common with other animals on our planet. These “virtues” are programmed at some level into our DNA, and they seem to compete with our more competitive instincts.

But if you look at the ur-pleasures that we receive from sharing, maybe altruism isn’t so “altruistic” after all. For example, when I share something - and I receive thanks and praise for my selfless generosity - I experience a sense of INFLUENCE. I experience a sense of AUTHORITY. I also put my own stamp of OWNERSHIP on the object or idea that I shared. That object or idea might not have been mine to begin with, but I earn a kind of social commission from others for putting it into wider syndication. After all, I was the guy who was smart enough to recognize its real value and relevance to my community of peers. And all of this rolled up gives me a sense of VALIDATION.

So, yes, I think you’re absolutely right. We share because we want to be accepted, and we’re soliciting compliments from the people who validate us. The nice thing about sharing, though, is that it appears so darned “altruistic.” So we get the reward of power and influence along with the added credibility of being “nice.”
Qui Diaz Says:
May 29th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Hear Hear on all of the above. I would add that I share things so that 1) we’ll all work smarter by having more information/inspiration and 2) I’ll appear smarter (by supporting an argument, getting facts straight, expanding the conversation).

Not loving the the idea that the spirit of share-and-share-alike altruism is driven by my own selfish desire to ROCK, but it’s obvious how that might be true.

I’ve always known it deep down, because one of the reason’s I sometimes refrain from passing on information is due to my fear of being perceived as someone who thinks she knows it all, someone who has shoddy ulterior motives, someone buys into the drama, or someone who believes the hype. When you share you’re not detached. This is a challenge for guarded individuals, no?

Although I just admitted to doing so, I rarely hold out on people intentionally. When we withhold the gold, it is always more selfish than “altruistically” giving the gold away, in the end. So please keep sharing (even if you’re scared sometimes).
Mike Mangi Says:
May 29th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
One more for the list? I often share to teach: I’m frequently called upon by family and friends for computer and web tech support. I find that it’s helpful to share a link to a site that offers further solutions to the problem I’m being asked to solve. Sharing these sites also helps to further cement my â€œGeek Credâ€ and gives me the rewards of validation, but I’m not sending the information unsolicited.
Laura Halsch Says:
May 29th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
Agreed, Qui. I think my pass-alongs generally fall under the “thinking of you” category. Whether at work or on a personal level, I share to let people know that I am thinking about a conversation we had, an upcoming project, a trip we are planning, a commercial we laughed at … It’s good way to keep the conversation going.

It is also a way to stay in the loop — a way to make sure I’ll be on the receiving end down the road. Part of sharing is getting something in return. Maybe it’s the validation that Bryan talked about, maybe it’s a feeling of community, or maybe its that email you can expect a few days later in return.
Bryan Callahan Says:
May 30th, 2007 at 7:13 am
Qui and Laura: These are both great additions to the conversation. I think you’re absolutely right that you can take the self-interest argument too far. There is real sharing for sharing’s sake, and real altruism as well. Building a community of peers is also more than about networking. It’s about building the culture and the worldview that you want to be a part of. It’s about making the world around you.
Mark Goren Says:
May 30th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
Open question: Curious to know if you forward things to friends more than you do to colleagues or if you feel there’s an equal balance. No doubt the reasoning would be different for each group and that the tone of the personal message you attach would be different too. Thoughts?
Alison Byrne Fields Says:
May 30th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
I think I definitely share things with colleagues more often than I do friends or family, primarily most of my friends and family don’t really have an interest in the kinds of things that I read — social media blogs — and there are a fair number of family members, like my mom, who don’t even use email. But I enjoy sharing things with them more. For example, I love the fact that I got my sister to set up a del.icio.us account after telling her I had something to share with her. It felt like it opened up a new way for us to communicate and acknowledge that we have common interests.
Transmission Content + Creative, Mark Goren, New Marketing Coach » Blog Archive » Forwarding = Balancing Act Says:
May 30th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
[...] That’s what happened when I wrote about The Early-In Loop last week. Douglas Walker from Venture Communications in Toronto and Alison Byrne Fields over at Olgilvy Public Relations Worldwide (see “outrageously active conversation”) picked up on the post, built on its premise and now have people talking about what motivates individuals to pass information along. [...]
Andre Blackman Says:
May 31st, 2007 at 8:26 am
I would have to agree with Alison on this one. Many of my Gen Y friends don’t even use social media applications such as Facebook or MySpace (as hard as that is to believe). So I usually have to share things the “old fashioned” way through email and sometimes that’s not enough. With that in mind, I usuall share more with colleagues or friends who are more in tuned to my interests. If I feel it’s a substantially important item, then I would take the time to make sure everyone knows about it.
Bryan Callahan Says:
May 31st, 2007 at 9:47 am
In regard to forwarding to friends vs. colleagues, I have to say that I do much more of the latter than the former. But I fear that may be a personal comment on work/life balance more than anything else.

I think it’s worth mentioning, though, that my forwarding to friends tends to be much more segmented than my forwarding to colleagues. I forward things to two different families - my own blue-state blood relatives and my wife’s red-state family. What both families find funny, interesting, and relevant is radically different, and I have to stay mindful of that all the time. (My wife is the key translator/facilitator here.) I also have a circle of college friends, and our forwards have evolved over the past decade from happy hour plans to baby pictures. And then there are former colleagues from past jobs and past lives. Each of these ongoing conversations has its own subset of relevant material, and that material defines and sustains my relationships with people who are very important to me in very different ways.
Mark Goren Says:
May 31st, 2007 at 1:50 pm
I like that point, Bryan, about how what you send can evolve over time. And that goes to the balancing act I talked about over at my site â€“ forwarding the right material to the right person. No doubt that comes into play when you send stuff to your family or your wife’s.

And i really think that’s the key here. Know your audience, don’t paint everyone with the same brush. Pretty much a rule to live by when you present any information to any audience in any context, I suppose.
Bryan Callahan Says:
June 2nd, 2007 at 12:45 pm
This morning I came up with another thing that “makes it go.” Guilt. Yes, guilt. But allow me to articulate in a way that may advance the conversation. I saw yesterday, Mark, that you had responded to my comment. But I was busy with work things and personal things that kept me from responding. I meant to respond this morning, but I realized that I only had a few half-formed thoughts in my head. Nothing really valuable. No potential insight. No way to exchange value-for-value. So what did I do? I went to the pool with my wife. But guilt came along with me. Sat in the lawn chair next to me. Whispered in my ear. Luckily, “Freakonomics” helped bail me out. And it gave me a way to express the value of guilt as a social media stimulus.

In “Freakonomics,” which is a fantastic read, the authors boil down the logic of incentives and map it to everything we humans do. And they suggest that there are at least three types of incentive that motivate human action: economic, social, and moral. They also note that moral incentives can be a lot more powerful than economic and social incentives in specific circumstances.

Take, for example, their discussion of the case of Israeli day care centers that hired an economist to help them figure out how to solve the problem of parents arriving late to pick up their kids. The economist tried an interim solution: apply a $3 fine per late pickup. And what happened? Late pickups increased dramatically. Why? Because the day care center replaced a moral incentive (feeling guilty about leaving the day care center employees in the lurch) with an economic incentive (an affordable $3 fine).

I think that one of the things about social media that “makes it go” links back to my first post: it goes because it is “social,” it does have a moral code of interaction, and it is based on a kind of personal relationship that is mediated by the quick-paced interactivity of the digital space. Mark, I felt guilt about not replying to you because we were engaged in a free-flowing, open, social conversation. And I also felt guilty because I didn’t think I had anything to add to the conversation for a good day. Which goes to show that social incentives can be just as compelling and creative as economic incentives.
Kristin Foster Says:
June 28th, 2007 at 12:09 am
Okay, I know this post is a little older, and my comment is probably not all the relevant now, but I have to do it.
Lately (okay for the last two months, really) I have been addicted to Will Ferrell’s new multimedia website. FunnyorDie.com is like a comedic YouTube. Although I am sure most of these videos are posted on YouTube too, Will’s got a great idea going. Kinda like the creation of “So You Think You Can Dance” (my personal favorite) off of American Idol, FunnyorDie creates this niche market of comedy specific videos. My favorites? - that I send to everyone and quote all the time (a little obsessively)…
“The Landlord” http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/74
and now “Good Cop, Baby Cop” http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/33f2687080

The reason being this: The only things that I am going to pass along are things that have an impact on me. Things that are remarkable to me. I can use a video or news article or blog post to make a connection with another individual, and in a way, albeit sometimes small and unnoticable, I can strengthen that relationship. Corny as it sounds, that’s the beauty of social media.

oh, and here’s another remarkable clip for your viewing pleasure…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ0k3XnLzMM
Alison Byrne Fields Says:
July 1st, 2007 at 5:21 pm
It’s never too late, Kristin — and it’s never too corny.

But, as for FunnyorDie? Well, I liked The Landlord as well, but I didn’t think Good Cop, Baby Cop was all that great. My PROBLEM with the site is that they claim that The Landlord is the most popular online video ever (or something like that), BUT, having embedded the video on my own personal blog, I noted that it played automatically every time I landed on the home page — when it was on the home page. And YouTube videos don’t do that. As far as I am concerned, that’s cheating. And social media isn’t about cheating.