Beyond Influencers: Social Network Properties and Viral Marketing

Beyond Influencers: Network Properties and Viral Marketing Prepared by David C. Evans Ph.D. Psychster Inc. 1.15.2009

“ A Metapattern…is the discarding of magnitudes in favor of shapes, patterns, and relations.”
Gregory Bateson, Cambridge Sociologist, in Mind and Nature, 1979
Leveraging Biological Patterns to Understand Social Networks “ One system may have one or more variables, each of which varies comparably to a variable in another system.” James Grier Miller, University of Chicago Psychologist, in Living Systems, 1978

Leveraging Biological Patterns to Understand Social Networks
“ The more mechanical we make our fabricated environment, the more biological it will eventually have to be if it is to work at all.”
“ The world of our own making has become so complicated that we must turn to the world of the ‘born’ to understand how to manage it.”
“ Ancient metaphors…of a machine as organism and an organism as machine are as old as the first machine itself. But now those enduring metaphors are no longer poetry. They are becoming real – profitably real.”
Kevin Kelly, Executive Editor of WIRED, in Out of Control, 1994

The Network Metapattern voltage capacity of aircraft reproduction rate of virus appeal of content intensity of impulse strength of signal likelihood to forward intimacy of friendships number of “influence channels” people Social Media percent of connections made frequency of flights to a given destination number of connections destinations Airline uptime of distributors likelihood of infection threshold of sodium channels threshold to fire current capacity & resistance intimacy of contacts thickness of axons strength of connections number of transmission lines number of contacts number of synapses number of connections generating stations & customers people neurons number of nodes Electrical Grid Epidemic Brain Network Property

The Network Metapattern 1 2 3 4 likelihood to forward intimacy of friendships appeal of content (open rate) number of “influence channels” people Social Media threshold of sodium channels threshold to fire thickness of axons strength of connections intensity of impulse strength of signal number of synapses number of connections neurons number of nodes Brain Network Property

Six Degrees of Separation “ The mean number of intermediaries observed in this study was somewhat greater than five…additional research indicates this value is quite stable.” Travers & Milgram. Sociometry, 1969 “ A random pair of nodes in the Messenger network is 6.6 hops apart on the average.” Leskovec & Horvitz. Microsoft Research, 2007 likelihood to forward intimacy of friendships appeal of content number of “influence channels” people Social Media threshold of sodium channels threshold to fire thickness of axons strength of connections intensity of impulse strength of signal number of synapses number of connections neurons number of nodes Brain Network Property

The Debate Over Influentials
“ If word of mouth is like a radio signal broadcast over the country, Influentials are the strategically placed transmitters that amplify the signal, multiplying dramatically the number of people who hear it.”
Keller & Berry, in The Influentials, 2003
“ Cascades do not succeed because of a few highly influential individuals influencing everyone else, but rather on account of a critical mass of easily influenced individuals influencing other easy-to-influence people. Watts & Dodds, JCR, 2007 likelihood to forward intimacy of friendships appeal of content number of “influence channels” people Social Media threshold of sodium channels threshold to fire thickness of axons strength of connections intensity of impulse strength of signal number of synapses number of connections neurons number of nodes Brain Network Property Influentials Average

Design Examples – Strength of Signal
Send from name not company
Merge real names not profile names
Ensure canned copy is conversational
Appears 1:1 not 1:many
Personal relevance.
likelihood to forward intimacy of friendships appeal of content number of “influence channels” people Social Media threshold of sodium channels threshold to fire thickness of axons strength of connections intensity of impulse strength of signal number of synapses number of connections neurons number of nodes Brain Network Property

Design Examples – Number of Connections
Reveal friends of friends
Import from address books
Recommend likely acquaintances

Design Examples – Strength of Connections
Ensure digital connections to have a real (biological) counterpart
Recommend making most likely sociological connections
Achieve goals.

Design Examples – Threshold to Forward
Unify consuming and forwarding into the same action.
Reward forwarding with status.

Design Examples – Threshold to Forward
Shift from targeting Influentials to cultivating Promoters.
Track top forwarders (recipients must open and forward on).
Associate them with artists.
Promoter Consumer Producer “ The tendency to ‘bask in reflected glory’ (BIRG) by publicly announcing one's associations with successful others.” Robert Cialdini et al., ASU Psychologist, in JPSP, 1976 likelihood to forward intimacy of friendships appeal of content number of “influence channels” people Social Media threshold of sodium channels threshold to fire thickness of axons strength of connections intensity of impulse strength of signal number of synapses number of connections neurons number of nodes Brain Network Property

About Psychster
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Our people are Ph.D. trained social scientists with extensive business and publishing experience in social software and social media.
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Beyond Influencers: Social Network Properties and Viral Marketing

by David Evans on Jan 23, 2009

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Beyond Influencers: Social Network Properties and Viral Marketing — Presentation Transcript