Viral Marketing

Emotional engagement is the key to viral marketing success. People share their everyday experiences by communicating them to others in and outside of their network. This social sharing is more rampant when the individuals develop intense feelings like fear, disgust, sadness, joy, anger and surprise.

Of all these emotions, surprise is a necessary ingredient which encourages people to pass on information they come across. Now let’s look at what surprise is and its impact on viral marketing. As partial reference, I’ll use a study from the Journal of Economic Psychology, one that examines surprise and its relationship to word-of-mouth.

Viral marketing is the process of using peer-to-peer communications in order to rapidly spread information about a brand or message. The term ‘viral’ stems from the concept of a ‘virus’, a self-perpetuating phenomenon which infects whatever it comes in contact with, spreading itself in an expanding outward arc. Your message is the virus. The carriers are your audience.

People encounter specific data or ideas daily and pass it on to their friends and other people in their network. All things equal, one can say that information is shared more rapidly when the recipient has a strong emotional connection with the specific message. They adore it. They despise it. They are deeply puzzled by it. It makes them upset. It makes them happy.

Back in August 2007, usability guru Jakob Nielsen wrote about banner blindness and indicated that plain text, faces and cleavage (or other private body parts) were the three design elements most effective at attracting eyeballs. While Nielsen didn’t examine any popular internet websites specifically, this eye-tracking research holds true in many instances.

Take Youtube for example, it’s well known that the use of sexy screenshots can help your videos get a lot more exposure. People are much more likely to click through on videos showing cleavage or the body of an attractive male/female.