Viral Marketing for the Real World
Harvard Business Review recently did a piece on viral marketing that has some interesting ideas (and it’s currently their #1 subscriber recommended article.) In addition to covering some of the basic metrics involved, the article discusses the idea of a “big seed” which simply means you start with a large number of people and you expose them to your viral message. A replication factor of 1 means that for every person you expose, you get one additional new person. Getting a 1 is hard to do but the theory here is that if you can only achieve a .5 (takes two people to get one new one), if you start with a large number, you can can still effectively double your the awareness of your message (100 yields 50 new, those 50 new yield 25, those 25 yield 12.5, etc.)
The article costs $4.50 to access. You can buy it here.
You can preview it for free here.
And you can listen for free to interview with Duncan Watts, co-author, here. It is Episode 42. Duncan is a professor of sociology at Columbia University where he directs the Collective Dynamics Group. His co-author is Jonah Peretti, founding partner of the Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, and ContagiousMedia.org.
Gary Ward
Topics: BuzzFeed, ContagiousMedia.org, Duncan Watts, Harvard Business Review, Huffington Post, Jonah Peretti, Marketing, Viral Marketing | No Comments »
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