Every day brands create content with the hopes that it will "go viral". The prospect of a massive amount of earned media (i.e. free impressions) is provocative, but how realistic is it? In order to create content that people will share we must understand certain undeniable truths that are grounded in who we are as humans and how we interact with each other.
This presentation will uncover why, how, and when people share using psychological, neurological, and biological truths. I will then apply these truths to a simple set of principles that will help improve the likelihood that the content you are creating is more sharable. It might not go viral, but more people will see it.
See video from Austin here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twe5KL84BCY
Couldn’t make it to SxSW Interactive this year? Don’t worry, the Social Media Club of Fort Worth has you covered! For our April speaker event, several SMCFW members who attended SxSW served as the presenters. Each speaker took five minutes to give their own mini presentation and talk to the group about their favorite SxSW session, speaker or conference experience.
CNW Presents... The New PR: Creating & Curating Trusted Content from @CraigSi...CNW Group
Learn essential tools and techniques for verifying online information, and learn how to quickly identify hoaxes that could negatively affect brands and companies. Craig will also offer some tips on how to create online content that enhances credibility.
Craig delivered this presentation at CNW Presents... The New PR on November 19, 2014 in Toronto.
Craig Gilman, our Digital Youth Adviser
presents a practical training session with a range of examples of how to use social media and online technologies in your youthwork practice. With digital skills and techniques participants can use immediately to engage and support young people’s online engagement.
Every day brands create content with the hopes that it will "go viral". The prospect of a massive amount of earned media (i.e. free impressions) is provocative, but how realistic is it? In order to create content that people will share we must understand certain undeniable truths that are grounded in who we are as humans and how we interact with each other.
This presentation will uncover why, how, and when people share using psychological, neurological, and biological truths. I will then apply these truths to a simple set of principles that will help improve the likelihood that the content you are creating is more sharable. It might not go viral, but more people will see it.
See video from Austin here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twe5KL84BCY
Couldn’t make it to SxSW Interactive this year? Don’t worry, the Social Media Club of Fort Worth has you covered! For our April speaker event, several SMCFW members who attended SxSW served as the presenters. Each speaker took five minutes to give their own mini presentation and talk to the group about their favorite SxSW session, speaker or conference experience.
CNW Presents... The New PR: Creating & Curating Trusted Content from @CraigSi...CNW Group
Learn essential tools and techniques for verifying online information, and learn how to quickly identify hoaxes that could negatively affect brands and companies. Craig will also offer some tips on how to create online content that enhances credibility.
Craig delivered this presentation at CNW Presents... The New PR on November 19, 2014 in Toronto.
Craig Gilman, our Digital Youth Adviser
presents a practical training session with a range of examples of how to use social media and online technologies in your youthwork practice. With digital skills and techniques participants can use immediately to engage and support young people’s online engagement.
020415 business storytelling by cynthia hartwigCynthia Hartwig
Anyone familiar with the Bible and Aesop’s fables already knows that stories are the oldest persuasive tool since the dawn of time. And now everybody from the The Wall Street Journal to LinkedIn is saying that storytelling will be the number one business skill needed in the next five years. That’s why you should run, don’t walk, to see the hands-on business storytelling workshop with Cynthia Hartwig, fiction writer and co-founder of Two Pens.
Over the course of her career in advertising and social media, Cynthia Hartwig has honed the act of telling stories into a fun and practical art. She’ll lead you in a series of practice-makes-perfect exercises that will help you to persuade, excite, sell and sway people to your point of view.
You’ll see how stories can be used in all kinds of business settings to communicate and connect with employees, customers, colleagues, partners, suppliers, and the media.
You’ll learn the mechanics of telling a story with a beginning that hooks you, to a middle that builds tension, to a satisfying end.
You’ll learn how to weave rich information (even numbers) with personal insights and emotional power and then experience the thrill of having an audience remember what you’ve said. Many writing exercises are included to help you tap into the mind’s unique hard-wiring that can create a story out of almost any experience.
Courage, Creativity, Collaboration: How to Succeed in the new PR and Media La...edward boches
Talk I gave to Council of PR Firms Boston event on October 3, 2013. Full text can be found on my blog.
Cover image downloaded from: http://www.hdwallpapersbank.com/red-bull-stratos-hd-wallpapers/
Five tricks to grow your audience using social mediaDave LaFontaine
This is a PPT version of my session at the Colombia 3.0 conference in Bogota in September 2015. In it, I lead the audience through five steps to build their audience (i.e. clients), and the 10 best techniques to craft attention-getting headlines, email headers and content.
A presentation given at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Palo Alto, CA on March 13, 2011. It was a conversation about the pros and cons of digital technology and its affect on our faith & spirituality.
Presentation a BGIedu (Bainbridge Graduate Institute) alumni workshop "Introduction to the Social Web". Topics included Shared Language, Definitions of Social Web, Social Networking, Social Media, Web 2.0, Blogs, etc.
Raccontare Twitter per il Non Profit in 75 minuti, il mio intervento all'edizione 2013 del Festival del Fundraising.
La prima parte descrive il livello base della gestione in 11 passi, dalla creazione dell'account all'uso degli hashtag.
La seconda parte esamina altri 5 passi per una gestione più evoluta, dalle Liste agli Analytics.
Al termine alcuni casi interessanti in cui Twitter è stato il determinante per la diffusione di campagne di fundraising.
Da ultimo due libri interessanti per le Non Profit che intendono utilizzare il Web per accompagnare e sostenere la propria attività.
Visitors and Residents: useful social media in librariesNed Potter
A keynote for the Interlend 2015 Conference. Blog post explaining these slides in more detail at: http://www.ned-potter.com/blog/visitors-and-residents-useful-social-media-in-libraries.
The Digital Natives myth is readily accepted but ultimately damaging. As students (and staff) come into our higher education system, to make blanket assumptions about their abilities with or understandings of technology based only on their date of birth is to do them a disservice.
An alternative way to explore peoples' use of the net is the Visitors and Residents model from Le Cornu and White (first brought to my attention by Donna Lanclos). I find this a proplerly useful way of thinking, which can help us as libraries provide geniunely useful social media for our users, whether they are in Visitor mode or Resident mode.
This presentation explores why the Digital Natives theory is a bust, introduces V&R, looks at the use of YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and Blogs by libraries, and provides links to more detailed papers on Digital Natives, Visitors and Residents, and other insightful viewpoints.
While the printed page has been the dominant medium in scholastic journalism, online publishing has started to take off. But keep in mind: It’s always about people. Plus: 15 Things to Think About for 2010-2011.
I was invited to speak at 5th annual New Media & Technology Conference in Frederick, MD on February 21, 2013. These are my slides and notes from a general session on content curation.
Sweet Emotion: What makes content go viral and how marketers can design conte...Peter Abbott
Find out what cake, blending I-Pads, subway sandwich baby, and Willy Wonka have in common. Discover what makes content go viral and how marketers can design content to influence sharing.
020415 business storytelling by cynthia hartwigCynthia Hartwig
Anyone familiar with the Bible and Aesop’s fables already knows that stories are the oldest persuasive tool since the dawn of time. And now everybody from the The Wall Street Journal to LinkedIn is saying that storytelling will be the number one business skill needed in the next five years. That’s why you should run, don’t walk, to see the hands-on business storytelling workshop with Cynthia Hartwig, fiction writer and co-founder of Two Pens.
Over the course of her career in advertising and social media, Cynthia Hartwig has honed the act of telling stories into a fun and practical art. She’ll lead you in a series of practice-makes-perfect exercises that will help you to persuade, excite, sell and sway people to your point of view.
You’ll see how stories can be used in all kinds of business settings to communicate and connect with employees, customers, colleagues, partners, suppliers, and the media.
You’ll learn the mechanics of telling a story with a beginning that hooks you, to a middle that builds tension, to a satisfying end.
You’ll learn how to weave rich information (even numbers) with personal insights and emotional power and then experience the thrill of having an audience remember what you’ve said. Many writing exercises are included to help you tap into the mind’s unique hard-wiring that can create a story out of almost any experience.
Courage, Creativity, Collaboration: How to Succeed in the new PR and Media La...edward boches
Talk I gave to Council of PR Firms Boston event on October 3, 2013. Full text can be found on my blog.
Cover image downloaded from: http://www.hdwallpapersbank.com/red-bull-stratos-hd-wallpapers/
Five tricks to grow your audience using social mediaDave LaFontaine
This is a PPT version of my session at the Colombia 3.0 conference in Bogota in September 2015. In it, I lead the audience through five steps to build their audience (i.e. clients), and the 10 best techniques to craft attention-getting headlines, email headers and content.
A presentation given at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Palo Alto, CA on March 13, 2011. It was a conversation about the pros and cons of digital technology and its affect on our faith & spirituality.
Presentation a BGIedu (Bainbridge Graduate Institute) alumni workshop "Introduction to the Social Web". Topics included Shared Language, Definitions of Social Web, Social Networking, Social Media, Web 2.0, Blogs, etc.
Raccontare Twitter per il Non Profit in 75 minuti, il mio intervento all'edizione 2013 del Festival del Fundraising.
La prima parte descrive il livello base della gestione in 11 passi, dalla creazione dell'account all'uso degli hashtag.
La seconda parte esamina altri 5 passi per una gestione più evoluta, dalle Liste agli Analytics.
Al termine alcuni casi interessanti in cui Twitter è stato il determinante per la diffusione di campagne di fundraising.
Da ultimo due libri interessanti per le Non Profit che intendono utilizzare il Web per accompagnare e sostenere la propria attività.
Visitors and Residents: useful social media in librariesNed Potter
A keynote for the Interlend 2015 Conference. Blog post explaining these slides in more detail at: http://www.ned-potter.com/blog/visitors-and-residents-useful-social-media-in-libraries.
The Digital Natives myth is readily accepted but ultimately damaging. As students (and staff) come into our higher education system, to make blanket assumptions about their abilities with or understandings of technology based only on their date of birth is to do them a disservice.
An alternative way to explore peoples' use of the net is the Visitors and Residents model from Le Cornu and White (first brought to my attention by Donna Lanclos). I find this a proplerly useful way of thinking, which can help us as libraries provide geniunely useful social media for our users, whether they are in Visitor mode or Resident mode.
This presentation explores why the Digital Natives theory is a bust, introduces V&R, looks at the use of YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and Blogs by libraries, and provides links to more detailed papers on Digital Natives, Visitors and Residents, and other insightful viewpoints.
While the printed page has been the dominant medium in scholastic journalism, online publishing has started to take off. But keep in mind: It’s always about people. Plus: 15 Things to Think About for 2010-2011.
I was invited to speak at 5th annual New Media & Technology Conference in Frederick, MD on February 21, 2013. These are my slides and notes from a general session on content curation.
Sweet Emotion: What makes content go viral and how marketers can design conte...Peter Abbott
Find out what cake, blending I-Pads, subway sandwich baby, and Willy Wonka have in common. Discover what makes content go viral and how marketers can design content to influence sharing.
On how we turn into 100% converged personality. Online-offline is one. And we don't just project our identity - we create online.
Work-Personal is one.
Holistic view - Taylorism is gone!
This Saturday was an amazing day, I couldn’t expect more for my first TEDx attedance.To be honest with you, I was expecting a pale version of TED talks but not at all.We lived all together a full day of TED talks supported by the Observer.
Dancing, laughing, crying all together. It was emotional, exhausting, inspiring, fun, unexpected.
I would attend this more often just to reboot my brain, challenge my views and cross my knowledge with multiple disciplines.
Here are my highlights of the day, I hope they will inspire more people!
10 Ways to Create and Enable Compelling B2B ContentTim Keelan
We all need more effective and compelling content to connect with our customers and prospects in a world where there there is a lot of noise. This is a 17 Page Visual Whitepaper detailing effective and useful tips in both the creative and enablement side of compelling content creation.
First we cover creating great content, and then enabling that content into awesome, simple and beautiful user experiences. Because poor content is, well, lame. But good content poorly enabled or delivered is a waste too. In the linked whitepaper we look at 5 keys to creating compelling content, and 5 keys to enabling that content. For each point we share our perspective while linking to outside resources and ideas. So please have a look, and feel free to share your ideas, examples, and feedback with us. Thank you!
Repurposed OLD insight deck for new planning blood. Purpose was to incite conversation on what good work is, how we get there, and what its like on they way. Attempted to attribute all appropriate folks.
A Skeptic's Guide to Branding (RefreshPDX 2/16)Zoe Landon
For many technically-minded people, "branding" and other business terms are a sort of taboo subject. Something looked at with disdain, or at minimum, skepticism.
However, a strong personal brand can make a developer's career smoother. So, I've tried to explain the concepts in a way that skeptical techies - like myself - can understand.
Kubernetes & AI - Beauty and the Beast !?! @KCD Istanbul 2024Tobias Schneck
As AI technology is pushing into IT I was wondering myself, as an “infrastructure container kubernetes guy”, how get this fancy AI technology get managed from an infrastructure operational view? Is it possible to apply our lovely cloud native principals as well? What benefit’s both technologies could bring to each other?
Let me take this questions and provide you a short journey through existing deployment models and use cases for AI software. On practical examples, we discuss what cloud/on-premise strategy we may need for applying it to our own infrastructure to get it to work from an enterprise perspective. I want to give an overview about infrastructure requirements and technologies, what could be beneficial or limiting your AI use cases in an enterprise environment. An interactive Demo will give you some insides, what approaches I got already working for real.
JMeter webinar - integration with InfluxDB and GrafanaRTTS
Watch this recorded webinar about real-time monitoring of application performance. See how to integrate Apache JMeter, the open-source leader in performance testing, with InfluxDB, the open-source time-series database, and Grafana, the open-source analytics and visualization application.
In this webinar, we will review the benefits of leveraging InfluxDB and Grafana when executing load tests and demonstrate how these tools are used to visualize performance metrics.
Length: 30 minutes
Session Overview
-------------------------------------------
During this webinar, we will cover the following topics while demonstrating the integrations of JMeter, InfluxDB and Grafana:
- What out-of-the-box solutions are available for real-time monitoring JMeter tests?
- What are the benefits of integrating InfluxDB and Grafana into the load testing stack?
- Which features are provided by Grafana?
- Demonstration of InfluxDB and Grafana using a practice web application
To view the webinar recording, go to:
https://www.rttsweb.com/jmeter-integration-webinar
Generating a custom Ruby SDK for your web service or Rails API using Smithyg2nightmarescribd
Have you ever wanted a Ruby client API to communicate with your web service? Smithy is a protocol-agnostic language for defining services and SDKs. Smithy Ruby is an implementation of Smithy that generates a Ruby SDK using a Smithy model. In this talk, we will explore Smithy and Smithy Ruby to learn how to generate custom feature-rich SDKs that can communicate with any web service, such as a Rails JSON API.
Neuro-symbolic is not enough, we need neuro-*semantic*Frank van Harmelen
Neuro-symbolic (NeSy) AI is on the rise. However, simply machine learning on just any symbolic structure is not sufficient to really harvest the gains of NeSy. These will only be gained when the symbolic structures have an actual semantics. I give an operational definition of semantics as “predictable inference”.
All of this illustrated with link prediction over knowledge graphs, but the argument is general.
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 3DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 3. In this session, we will cover desktop automation along with UI automation.
Topics covered:
UI automation Introduction,
UI automation Sample
Desktop automation flow
Pradeep Chinnala, Senior Consultant Automation Developer @WonderBotz and UiPath MVP
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
GraphRAG is All You need? LLM & Knowledge GraphGuy Korland
Guy Korland, CEO and Co-founder of FalkorDB, will review two articles on the integration of language models with knowledge graphs.
1. Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08302
2. Microsoft Research's GraphRAG paper and a review paper on various uses of knowledge graphs:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/graphrag-unlocking-llm-discovery-on-narrative-private-data/
Builder.ai Founder Sachin Dev Duggal's Strategic Approach to Create an Innova...Ramesh Iyer
In today's fast-changing business world, Companies that adapt and embrace new ideas often need help to keep up with the competition. However, fostering a culture of innovation takes much work. It takes vision, leadership and willingness to take risks in the right proportion. Sachin Dev Duggal, co-founder of Builder.ai, has perfected the art of this balance, creating a company culture where creativity and growth are nurtured at each stage.
Elevating Tactical DDD Patterns Through Object CalisthenicsDorra BARTAGUIZ
After immersing yourself in the blue book and its red counterpart, attending DDD-focused conferences, and applying tactical patterns, you're left with a crucial question: How do I ensure my design is effective? Tactical patterns within Domain-Driven Design (DDD) serve as guiding principles for creating clear and manageable domain models. However, achieving success with these patterns requires additional guidance. Interestingly, we've observed that a set of constraints initially designed for training purposes remarkably aligns with effective pattern implementation, offering a more ‘mechanical’ approach. Let's explore together how Object Calisthenics can elevate the design of your tactical DDD patterns, offering concrete help for those venturing into DDD for the first time!
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
3. Every marketer has heard that
ABSTRACT
great content with a good
influencer strategy can lead to
virality.
This simply isn't true.
Virality is not dependent on
good content or
disproportionately influential
people; it's based on the
ability of content to spread
freely across a network.
5. SO, WHAT IS CONTENT?
When I say content, I don’t
just mean a YouTube video or
a blog post.
Content can be an idea, a
product, a behavior, or a
service.
Content is anything you want
people to advocate for and
consume.
6. YOU’VE HEARD THE SAYING…
Content doesn’t actually
matter as much as you think it
does.
You can create the best
content in the world, but if
nobody consumes it, it is
considered unsuccessful.
This happens all the time.
Think of all of the products,
songs, movies, and other
content created every day.
Do you believe that all good
content becomes successful?
Or that all successful content
is good?
7. TIME’S TOP TEN VIRAL VIDEOS OF 2011
1. Rebecca Black – Friday
2. Man with Golden Voice
3. VW Darth Vader
Commercial
4. Lonely Island — "Jack
Sparrow”
5. Father-Daughter singing
“Home”
6. Webcam 101 for Seniors
7. My Drunk Kitchen – Brunch
8. Anderson Cooper Cracks
Up
9. Dancing Thom Yorke
10. Honey Badger
8. There are very few common
CONNECTING WITH CONTENT
attributes between these videos.
The content ranges from a Super
Bowl commercial to a father and
daughter covering a song sitting
on their bed.
There are millions of cover songs,
commercials, and music videos
on YouTube.
These videos did not go viral
because of their content, they
went viral because of how
groups of people connected
and reacted to the content.
9. THERE IS NO VIRAL FORMULA
There is no way to predict
what will go viral.
Common sense says that the
first step to going viral is
creating “great” content, but
that’s not possible.
So here lies our conundrum, it
impossible to define “great”
content without it already
being considered “great”.
10. THE MONA LISA DILEMMA
When we try to describe great
content, we run into what
Duncan Watts describes in his
book Everything is Obvious.
It’s not possible to define “great
content” without describing
what the content is.
What makes the Mona Lisa
Great? The subject matter? The
smile? The layers of paint? The
composition? None of these
things? All of these things?
The Mona Lisa is great because it
has the properties that make up
the Mona Lisa.
This is circular logic.
11. HE WASN’T THAT GREAT
A popular example we can all
relate to is The Old Spice Guy
commercials.
What made it great?
Most would say “It was
original, funny, and appealed
to their target”.
The problem is, there are
many commercials that set
out with the same goals.
It is only after the campaign
became popular that we can
peg its success to its
attributes.
12. THE MICRO / MACRO PROBLEM
Describing content as the
reason for success sets us up
for failure because we aren’t
looking at the whole picture.
We try to explain a macro
phenomenon, content
going viral, by explaining the
micro attributes of our
content.
When trying to understand
complex problems we
cannot look at individual
actions or attributes, we
have to look at the entire
system.
13. THERE’S MORE THAN JUST A MATCH
Think of a forest fire. We don’t
extensively analyze the
properties of a match to
understand why there was a
fire.
We look at the match along
with the dryness of the brush,
the direction of the wind, the
other trees in proximity… we
look at the whole network.
14. DON’T GET ME WRONG, CONTENT STILL MATTERS
It is still important that we
create groundbreaking
content, but if we focus on
content alone will we will
inevitably fail.
The issue is we tend to
correlate good content with
virality and this is a false
correlation.
Some may agree that
content isn’t that important as
long as you pick the right
mass influencers.
Sadly, this isn’t true either.
16. In marketing, the definition of an
HOW WE TYPICALLY DEFINE INFLUENCERS
influencer generally falls in line with
Malcolm Gladwell’s definition of
connectors in his book The Tipping
Point.
Gladwell defines connectors as
“People in a community who know
large numbers of people and who
are in the habit of making
introductions”. He goes on to say
“their ability to span many different
worlds is a function of something
intrinsic to their personality, some
combination of curiosity, self-
confidence, sociability, and
energy.”
This theory is false. There tend not
to be magical people who can
inherently connect a
disproportionate amount of
people.
17. Viral, as an adjective, is
FIRST, LET’S DEFINE VIRAL
something that is caused by a
virus.
A virus is an infection caused
by an agent through a
system.
By this definition a popular
song is a virus. A best selling
book is a virus. A fire is a virus.
A common cold is a virus.
18. HOW VIRUSES REALLY WORK
We all know how a cold is
transmitted.
Pam is sick, comes into the
office, gets Andrew sick,
then Andrew goes home
and infects his girlfriend Sue.
There are not super
contagious people who run
around infecting their
connections along with their
connection's connections.
So why do we believe that
there are super influential
people who can virally
spread ideas?
19. MASS INFLUENCERS DO NOT EXIST
There are not super star mega
influential people in the world.
There are people who are
more influential than others
but not by an exponential
margin.
The key to spreading
information and creating
virality lies in understanding
the structure of social
networks and creating
content that will spread freely
throughout those networks.
20. But what about Opera
THE OPRAH DELUSION
Winfrey? You know, the talk
show host who, at the mere
utterance of a product, could
incite mass hysteria. Isn’t she
exponentially more influential
than most?
No, no she is not.
Take away her television
show, her magazine, her
twitter account, and her
media empire and see how
influential she is.
When you remove her from
her network she is no more
influential than you or I.
21. THE MIDNIGHT RIDE OF… WILLIAM DAWES?
Most of us have heard of the
midnight ride of Paul Revere.
Revere was an American
revolutionist who rode through
New England alerting
minutemen that “The British are
Coming”.
Chances are, you haven’t heard
of William Dawes. Dawes also
alerted colonial minutemen in
New England, but he took a
different route.
Was Revere more influential than
Dawes? Or was it the fact that
they traveled on different
networks?
23. THE MISSING TARGET
Typically, when we create
content, we research our
target and make sure our
message reaches them.
This assumes that everybody
who would consume our
content can be influenced by
us directly.
Influence does not always
work this way.
24. WHO INFLUENCES WHOM?
Social networks are
comprised of strong and
weak ties.
Strong Ties – The people you
are directly connected to.
Weak Ties – These are friends
of friends; people who can be
reached through other strong
ties.
25. Common conjecture tells us
THE WEAKNESS OF STRONG TIES
that if we target our passionate
fan base they will help us
spread our content to infinity
and beyond.
This assumption is flawed.
Strong ties are usefull for calling
people to action, but not for
spreading information.
Our challenge is that
homophilous groups tend to be
incestuous, i.e., information
tends to stay within these
communities.
In order for information to
transfer from one group to
another it is important to
activate weak ties.
26. According to sociologist Mark
THE STRENGTH OF WEAK TIES
Granovetter, activating weak
ties is imperative for spreading
information between groups.
Weak ties are the bridges
between separate strongly
connected groups.
In order for information to
spread we must create content
that can easily move from one
group to another through these
loose social ties.
27. THREE DEGREES OF INFLEUNCE
Did you know your friends
friends friend can make you
fat?
A study by Nicholas Christakis
and James Fowler found that
people up to three degress
away from you could affect
how happy you are, what you
purchase, your political views,
and even your body weight.
This means that the shirt your
wearing, the TV show you
watch, even the phone in your
hand could have been
influenced by somebody you
have likely never met.
28. Your decisions can, on
average, influence up to three
THE CASCADE EFFECT
people directly.
This may not seem like much,
but when put in the context of
a network, one persons
decision can influence the
choice of thousands of people.
Not because they are
exponentially more influential,
but because of the cascade
effect.
29. HYPERDYADIC SPREAD
Hyperdyadic spread is the
tendency of things to spread
from person to person to
person.
This is what we call “going
viral”.
The decision of one person to
share something could create
a cascade effect unwittingly
influencing thousands of
people to change a behavior
or to consume content.
30. A REVELATION
Once we realize that the
spread of content isn’t solely
attributable to great content
and an influencer strategy, it
becomes clear that we have
to look deeper into what truly
causes virality.
32. THINK NETWORK(LY)
We tend to think of societal
behaviors in terms of
individual people – If we
understand the parts, we can
understand the whole.
This is not necessarily true.
People are not individual
actors acting on a
predictable chain of events.
People belong to dynamic,
self organizing, emergent,
complex networks.
33. In their simplest forms, social
HOW SOCIAL NETWORKS ARE STRUCTURED
networks tend to be made up
of many homophilous groups
tied together through strong
and weak social ties.
For example, Brian has a group
of friends from school, a group
from work, and his family. Brian
is the social tie that connects
his school and work friends.
If a rumor were to start
amongst his school friends, the
only way it could get to his
work friends would be through
him.
The rumor can reach his work
friends through Brian (strong tie)
or by proxy (a weak tie).
34. Viral ideas are contagion that
HOW IDEAS SPREAD THROUGH NETWORKS
travel through our social
networks. They are spread
similarly to viruses.
For ideas to spread far they
must travel through many
groups of friends.
These groups of friends tend
to have different
demographics,
psychographics, and
geographics.
35. As most groups are
NEW IDEAS FLOWS THROUGH WEAK TIES
homophilous, they tend to
speak about and share the
same information.
Typically, it takes somebody
from outside the group to bring
new information to a group.
This is especially evident in a
country like North Korea. The
lack of weak ties due to
dictatorship has lead to a lack
of advancement and new
ideas.
Weak social ties are the key to
virality.
36. MAPPING SOCIAL NETWORK
In order to understand our
social networks we must map
them.
Mapping entails figuring out
who is connected to us, who
they are connected to, who
they are connected to, and so
on.
This will give us a good idea of
the structure of our networks
and how information will best
spread through them.
37. THE EMBEDDEDNESS OF NODES
Embeddedness is the degree in
which a person is enmeshed
within their social network.
People who are more
embedded tend to be in the
center of their network and
have more connections to
others within their network.
This plays a crucial role in how
influential a person is likely to
be.
The more embedded a person
is in their network, the more
likely it is that they can spread
information.
38. Through mapping we can
HIGHLY EMBEDDED NODES
identify the most embedded
nodes. These people are our
true influencers, but they are
not inherently influential.
They are influential for who
they know and who they
don’t know. They are
influential because where
they are located within the
network.
39. Social networks are enormously
IT’S NOT THAT EASY
complex, dynamic, living
entities.
People add, remove, and
amend links in their social
networks everyday. The
network we map today could
be irrelevant tomorrow.
Even if we perfectly mapped
the people who are most able
to spread our content, it does
not mean we have solved the
virality equation.
We should not make the same
mistake we currently make;
expecting a simple idea such
as “highly embedded nodes”
to solve a complex problem like
virality.
40. THE SECRET SAUCE
There is no secret sauce. If
there was we wouldn’t have
jobs.
What we can do is create
content that activates strong
ties to call people to action
and weak ties to spread the
content through the network.
Starting with the people who
are most centrally embedded
within their social networks is a
good start.
Anybody who tells you
otherwise is lying.
43. SUMMATION
- Good content is important, but it is not possible to plan for.
- Focusing on content alone will not lead to virality.
- “Mass influencers” do not exist.
- Some people are more influential because of where they are located in their social network.
- Strong ties tend to call people to action and weak ties tend to transmit information between groups.
- The actions of one person can affect the actions people up to three degrees away.
- The single decision of one person can cause thousands of people to unwittingly follow suit.
- The more central a person is within their social network the more likely they are to be influential.
- There is no secret sauce to creating popular content.
- The best we can do is create content that can spread through weak and strong ties and seed it through
the most centrally located people in their social networks.
44. PHOTO CREDITS
Slide 1: Kheel Center http://www.flickr.com/photos/kheelcenter/5279081507/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Slide 2: http://wallpapersup.net/sunset-hot-air-balloon-evening/
Slide 3: Wayne Large http://www.flickr.com/photos/havovubu/7583004344/sizes/l/in/set-72157630603658564/
Slide 5: NS Newsflash http://www.flickr.com/photos/62693815@N03/6277209256/lightbox/
Slide 6 Digitopoly http://www.digitopoly.org/2011/11/26/betting-on-content-is-king/
Slide 8: Austin Even http://www.flickr.com/photos/austinevan/1225274637/sizes/o/in/photostream/
Slide 9: Please Request (missing)
Slide 12: Pierre Guinoiseau http://www.flickr.com/photos/geekounet/4629143188/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Slide 13: Please Request (missing)
Slide 14: Avixyz http://www.flickr.com/photos/avlxyz/188684627/sizes/o/in/photostream/
Slide 16: Benson Kua http://www.flickr.com/photos/bensonkua/4944413700/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Slide 17: jez.atkinson http://www.flickr.com/photos/cloppy/5099531956/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Slide 18: Twenty_Questions http://www.flickr.com/photos/twenty_questions/2192450204/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Slide 19: Wayne Large http://www.flickr.com/photos/havovubu/3728604649/sizes/o/in/photostream/
Slide 23: Clif1066 http://www.flickr.com/photos/nostri-imago/3137422976/sizes/o/in/photostream/
Slide 24: Horia Varina http://www.flickr.com/photos/horiavarlan/4329180541/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Slide 25: Please Request (Missing)
Slide 26: Please Request (missing)
Slide 27: Nicholas Christakis, James Fowler
Slide 28: RFDuck http://www.flickr.com/photos/rfduck/433211875/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Slide 29: TheSeanseter93 http://www.flickr.com/photos/theseanster93/2525458030/
Slide 30: Luke Peterson http://www.flickr.com/photos/lukepeterson/7179857175/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Slide 32: Didbygraham http://www.flickr.com/photos/didbygraham/334447437/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Slide 33: Zigazou76 http://www.flickr.com/photos/zigazou76/5809831758/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Slide 34: Yuliya Libkina http://www.flickr.com/photos/juliannehide/1117286012/sizes/o/in/photostream/
Sldie 35: kyz http://www.flickr.com/photos/kyz/2619488564/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Slide 36: Tristam Sparks http://www.flickr.com/photos/friendly-fire/1303196553/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Slide 37: Marc_Smith http://www.flickr.com/photos/marc_smith/6584205737/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Slide 38: josullivan.59 http://www.flickr.com/photos/97373666@N00/3264396897/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Slide 39: Wayne Large http://www.flickr.com/photos/havovubu/4073705024/sizes/o/in/set-72157625812552599/
Slide 40: Wayne Large http://www.flickr.com/photos/havovubu/3734804839/sizes/l/in/set-72157621562337479/
Slide 41: Anna Tesar http://www.flickr.com/photos/spanner/3025145676/sizes/o/in/photostream/