viral marketing Archives - Successful Blog

Why Your Request for Help Isn’t Getting A Response

April 26, 2011 by Liz

New Culture, New Thinking

Whether you’ve been on social web from the beginning or you just got here and whether you work for yourself, for clients, or an employer, if your goal is to grow your business or cause — and if it’s not, why isn’t it? — being able to spread your positive message is critical.

Social business and social media can business development, brand awareness, and marketing so much easier because of the people-centered, networking nature of the tools and culture. What drives social media and social business is the idea that people like to connect with and talk to other people.

The messages we share are important and vital to the causes we care about. Often they’re urgent and vital to the success of the projects and campaigns that we’re working on. Yet we need the help of our networks — our communities of colleagues and friends — to get them out, hopefully to take them viral.

So we put together an idea to spread, a call to action that our advocates and evangelists might talk about and share. The problem is that everyone is trying to be subject of the hour as much as we are and true advocates and evangelists are few. So we reach out further to find volunteers in hopes that they will help us as well.

Why Your Request for Help Isn’t Getting A Response

The problem is that we can get so wrapped up in the value of the “goodness” of what we’re doing that we can forget to pass that goodness on it with our request for help. We use the time to detail the “ask,” without letting the people we’re asking know how and why it’s about them to follow through on it. As a result, the request to help us with our cause, our launch, our contest, and sound selfish and leave folks wondering why they should take time to do it.

We can’t ensure a message with take off like wildfire, go viral, with certainty. It’s a combination of timing, connection, resonance, and a perfect match to the audience. Here are three reasons why a request won’t get much attention at all…

“Buy my stuff” / “help my cause” and “tell everyone” broadcasts. No one has time or resources to do something just because someone asks. It would be silly to do so and we’re not doing our work if we think just saying “buy now,” is enough. These days people get asked so much that lack of a compelling reason to act is enough to be an excuse to say “no.” And passing it on means that we’re only passing more “buy my stuff” noise to our friends.
“Do this because I / we / need you” to share this messages. Research shows that using “because” will raise your odds. But will that raise your odds enough? We’re bombarded by “calls to action” that are really “calls to help” so much so that the nonprofit world has a term called donor fatigue. Our response to such messages is directly proportional to our relationship to the person, business, or the cause that is asking. We can’t give our everything to everyone, can we? And you can’t keep asking every week.
“I’m shameless to ask / feeling guilty to ask / begging, so won’t you share this?” messages. Asking for a favor is a friendship action. If you feel shameless for asking, then you shouldn’t ask. If you don’t, don’t say that you do. Saying you’re shameless is asking me to be shameless with you. If we have a relationship of trust, you can tell me what you need and let me decide.

All three messages stop short. They literally leave out what’s need to connect in way that resonates. If we want the potential to go viral, we need that connection in a human to human way.

These messages ask the receiver to choose between helping out and interrupting, nagging, possibly irritating their own network of friends. That’s pressure that no one enjoys and it often backfires on the sender who may have had the best of intentions.

Very often when I get messages like these, I wonder whether the sender has considered me at all in what they’re asking. I want to reply with “Why should I promote yours and not the other ten I just got? I can’t spent my time or bother my friends promoting all of them.”

As they stand all three messages are missing one powerful piece that is crucial to taking a message viral – a connection to the person we’re asking to pass it on. To make it much more likely that your message will get a chance a long and viral run make the act of doing what you need about the people you ask not about you or your cause.

Be a hero by pitching in $1, http://hero.link [someone will sleep in a warm bed tonight]. Pass it on to heroes you admire.

When you make it easy and help folks like heroes for helping, they more often do.

How often do help and RT requests that make you feel proud to pass them on?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Be Irresistible: Grow with the Community Who Loves to Tell Your Best Story

March 1, 2011 by Liz

10-Point Plan in Action: The Off-site meeting

Money Can’t Buy Love

At a recent corporate team-building meeting, I experienced a speaker’s dream of a setup. The company VP who spoke before me discussed a tactic used by the competition — how they secretly pay people to talk about them from speaker platforms and in the press.

That simple shocking story made my opening statement easy. I repeated the competition’s tactic, then I quoted Paul McCartney …

I don’t care too much for money. Money can’t buy me love.

The company in the room already had a core community of enthusiasts who are fiercely loyal fans.

We talked about how love beats money and these six steps that will get people who love you together into a community and talking about you:

Build your network before you need it.
Share that story about you that connects people.
Let them tell it the way they want to. Leave lots of room for positive mutation. People feel ownership when they contribute.
Make it easy, fun, and meaningful to share the message with friends.
Make it so that folks feel proud, important, part of something they do together.
Reward and celebrate your heroes who share what you do.

I used this presentation to organize my thoughts around those ideas.

Whos talking about you

View more presentations from Liz Strauss

We discussed how great marketing and growing businesses are a balance of

leadership and loyalty — leaders learn from our heroes, align our goals with our advocates, and attract loyal fans with by valuing them.
customer and company — great businesses value both customers and company. They know that without the company customers won’t be served and without customers the company can’t survive.

Today, I’m talking to another already irresistible organization about the same six steps and the underlying values inside their value proposition.

Great businesses are about one community — employees, vendors, partners, clients, customers — looking in the same direction, working together to build something no one person can build alone. Communities like that grow companies that serve customers who love them. Those customers bring their trust and their energy and are quick to share your best stories with their friends.

That’s how we get to be the first trusted source — a stand alone value that can’t be copied or replaced.

This week I met with the corporation that held the off-site. We began planning the strategy for making it even easier, faster, and more meaningful — irresistible — for the existing community to meet online, offline and even at the company. We’ll be showing them how they can share ideas, swap strategies, and invite their best friends to join them. We’ll be extending an unending invitation to become a bigger part of the living story of how a company and it’s customers grow together and thrive.

What’s your best story — the one that customers are already telling about you?
How easy are making for your heroes to meet each other and pass it on?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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21 Tweeters and What’s Wrong with Viral Marketing

February 8, 2011 by Liz

Last week, I was invited to speak at an interdepartmental off-site. People from product, IT, marketing, sales, research, design, and PR were involved. The SVP who designed the event set up the room in teams in which one person from each department was represented. She arranged the day to be filled with interactive information and conversation so that ideas could grow.

The week before the event, I’d had lunch with that SVP to talk about what her goals were for my presentation. She talked about how rumors spread and how people connect. She also used the word “viral” in the proposed title of my talk. I asked if she minded if we edited that word out.

Communicating the nature of viral marketing, was going to be an important goal of my day.

What Is Viral Marketing?

The morning of the off-site I checked into Twitter before I left and thought, Here’s an opportunity to bring social media in action and authority other than my own into the room.

So, I tweeted this question.

I favorited the responses, pulled them up in my @mentions list, took two screen shots, and made a two-page handout to share. The folks who responded are people I follow on Twitter and after you read what they said I’m betting you’ll want to follow them too, so I’m including links to their Twitter accounts. Top down the tweets are in the order I received them. [Thank you all for making my quest easier, faster, and more meaningful for me and the folks I’d soon be talking to.]

@michaelport I’d say if I knew the “secret” I wouldn’t be here today.
@steveplunkett “being in the right place at the right time, with the right thought” or “controlled manipulation of people online”
@shivya You can’t call it viral until it is viral. The secret is engaging, entertaining, informational, sharable content.
@egculbertson be authentic, be humble, be relevant to your audience, and be funny or approachable. then, hope for a stroke of good luck.
@ElysiaBrooker in the (paraphrased) words of
@unmarketing : MAKE AWESOME CONTENT and the rest will happen naturally.
@RobPene a video of cute cats dancing to Snoop Dog lol 🙂
@jenniferwindrum I would tell them the only thing that could potentially “go viral” is their stupidity. No secret there. 🙂
@tbains That there’s no way to predict or manipulate what goes viral. Instead, focus on quality first. Lame but true
@chris_c_lucas Do cool sh*t and do it consistently. Then let other people talk about it. It’s simple 🙂
@TheStudioNH Viral marketing makes me get an anti-buy-otic.
@_Signalfire_ like a virus spreading, the right conditions must exist with the right host. It’s all up to the community it’s introduced into.
@DeniseWBarreto Be authentic and have a real desire to better the lives of your target otherwise clever, cool but false intentions #fail
@EOC_jmello Viral Marketing does not actually exist. It’s about having the right content, right audience, at the right time.
It goes along with agencies that tell clients they can make something go viral. BS! Sometimes luck plays into it too.
@katyboog123 humour is a good one, also shock value.
@minormusic Viral mktg is not a substitute for quality face time w influential ppl in your market. Ur reputation still proceeds u.
@mikecassidyAZ enlighten, enrage, engross, or make ’em smile.
@scotmckee Secret to viral is remembering that the crowd decides what goes viral – not you. 🙂
@DavidFord83 Absolutely true! RT @MinorMusic: @lizstrauss Viral mktg is not a substitute for quality face time w influential ppl in your market.
@AWomansWork Forget viral & think what’s relevant & interesting to your audience. That, or leprechauns.
@TourismCurrents Yesterday we tweeted that the term “viral campaign” needs to be taken out and shot. No change in our position. 🙂
@jason_baker Is it just me or is “creating viral campaigns” in a job description a bit off?! 😉

The problem with viral marketing is that it focuses on the product and the message and not the people we want to share that message. If we want people to listen, engage, and share what we’re doing, we have to make it about them.

What invitation, reminder, or question might you offer to help us all stay focused more on the people and less on the message?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Your Personal Tale of Survival — and Success

April 3, 2008 by Liz

Yesterday J.C. Hutchins told his personal tale of survival. Today I asked him to say a few words how we might use his model in our own lives.

So J.C.’s brought us this.

Your Personal Tale of Survival — and Success

by J.C. Hutchins

Now to your personal tale of survival and success. We all have had a creative idea, or business model, or blog concept that we’re ferociously passionate about. Often, we don’t pursue that passion because it is untested — in fact, it probably appears to be doomed before launch, when viewed through the filter of conventional wisdom. After all, if it doesn’t already exist, how could it possibly be profitable?

My suggestion: If you are soul-certain that your idea is a great and sustainable one, tell the world to bugger off. Ignore the “no” noise. Say Damn It All and make the leap of faith in yourself and your work. And if you make it to that point — the edge of the precipice, the moment before you take that leap — remember these things:

You’re going to work harder for this than you’ve worked for damned-near anything else in your life: In the beginning, this passion project will be yours, from soup to nuts. You’re the one-man band: the boss, the employee, the cheerleader, the bookkeeper. It’ll suck more time than you’ll anticipate, it’ll be in your capillaries, and it’ll be exhausting.
You’re going to doubt yourself, your idea, and the commitment you’ve made: It’s okay to slip into “what am I doing?” mode. That’s human nature, particularly if your project’s success hinges on the long tail (as so many online businesses do). But as Journey once famously sang, “Don’t stop believing.” You’ve got a killer product, and you’re soul-certain of it. Which leads us to …
Do everything you can to evangelize your work: You’re a one-man band — a frickin’ maestro! — but what good is that if you’re playing to an empty room? Reach out to friends and family to spread the word. Invite online influencers to either blog/podcast about — or participate in — your endeavor. Find creative ways to engage your audience and these influencers. Answer every email. Make yourself available on platforms such as AIM, Twitter and Skype, should it be appropriate for your project. Promote your availability.
Empower your audience to become participants: If you do indeed have a killer product, and you’re funneling your energies into promotion and making yourself available to consumers, you will indeed find an audience. They’ll be supportive, emotive and hungry to contribute. So let them! Welcome them into your sandbox, beyond mere blog comments. Liz does this with great effect with her Open Comment Tuesdays, in which she’s there, interacting with you, during the experience. For “7th Son,” I solicit fan-created fiction, artwork, music and voice mail recordings that are inspired by the story, and post them on my site. This builds a community that defies the geography and ones and zeros that separate you from your consumer.
Ask your audience to evangelize on your behalf: There is no shame in questing for success, and there’s no shame in asking your consumers (who are now hopefully “fans”) to spread the word. Doing all of the promotional on your own will likely burn you out … and worse still, denies another opportunity for your audience to contribute. If appropriate, create an online street team and offer fun incentives for your community to participate. (I have a “Ministry of Propaganda” that offers branded swag to helpful evangelists.) If you’re audience is engaged, they won’t be spreading the word for the prizes. They’ll be doing it because they believe in you, and what you’re doing.
Don’t be afraid to experiment: Be wily with your promotion, your content and your relationship with your audience. Find what techniques work best to further your influence in the space, and enhance your relationship with your consumers. If you’re a blogger, try releasing a pod- or vidcast post, just to shake things up. Be daring. Never sit still. Solicit feedback. See what sticks.
Finally: Don’t be afraid to shift your goals: If your project is more (or less) successful than you originally anticipated, don’t be a bonehead and squander an opportunity to ramp-up (or scale back) your ambitions. Too often, we commit to a course of action and — through either stubbornness or inertia — forget that we are empowered and can control the direction of our endeavor. When I launched my podcast novel in 2006, I did it as a lark, to see if I could find an audience for my work. When that goal had been attained, I shifted priorities and began questing again for publication. I heard more than 100 more “no’s” from literary agents my second time around, but I persisted and eventually found an agent, and a publisher. You can similarly find opportunities to change your own course when needed, while remaining faithful to your original concept.

Remember that you already are a walking, talking survival story, and that you claim victories every day in your life. But if you have an idea for a great business, service or blog — that untested thing inside your mind that just won’t shut up — and have the gumption to pursue it, do it. Let your passion drive you, and know that you’re doing a brave thing, one that may be filled with risk.

But bravery, risk and beating the odds are the best part of every story of survival — and success.

What’s your great idea? What other suggestions do you have for saying Damn It All, making the leap of faith, cultivating communities and evangelism, and realizing your goals? I’d love to hear them in the comments.

——
Thanks, J.C.! This is just what we need to do to invest in our ideas.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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