Viral engagement is about a value exchange where by a person tells someone else about something in order to gain something. There is always a value exchange happening, it’s just a matter of distilling down exactly what that exchange is. Viral Engagement is designed to spread the awareness and perception change through networks of people rather than through traditional advertising or PR vehicles. Its often referred to as a form of Word of Mouth Marketing (WOM).
It is important to take a couple of things into account when planning a Viral Engagement experience.
- Insure your “thing” is compelling enough to your audience that they need to share it
- Make the ability to share as easy and seamless as possible
- Respect the trust between the people sharing, don’t abuse it
- Provide a value to both the sharer and the receiver for participating
- Provide increased value to people the more people they share with
Viral Model
Let’s take a look at how a viral online system works. First a user of a site encounters something that interests them. They usually spend some time interacting with it. During this time they are sub-consciously evaluating how this experience will benefit their position in their social network, and more specifically whether they want to connect people they know to this experience.
I tend to think of every interaction as a transactional exchange. Monetary, time, or social capital is exchanged during the interaction. Most viral engagements rely heavily on the concept of social capital, you are sharing something in hopes that the person you share it with will find it valuable and hence your social capital with them goes up.
The Power of Viral
Everyone knows the power of viral growth, the unlimited and exponential growth potential is what virtually every buzz marketing campaign is hoping to tap into. But let’s look at it a little more systematically and extract some variables we can use to predict outcomes and measure our success.
- The percentage of visitors who share
- Percentage of people who receive a shared item and take an action
- The average number of new people that someone shares with over a set period of time
- The frequency with which a person continues to share with new people
- Bound of the social network.
Viral engagements are based on the assumptions that the conversion rates will be higher because it is being shared via trusted relationships. So when someone receives something shared by someone they know, the initial response rate is higher and they are more likely to take an action.
Let’s see how this works, say you had 10 people who came to your site of those 5% decide to make a $25 donation all of whom as part of that process share with an average of 5 people, of the people who don’t donate 20% decide to forward on to 5 people. Say this continues for 30 cycles, at the end of this time you would have raised over $14,000, and touched over 11,000 people of whom almost 600 have moved further up in their engagement with your organization. Continue it for 10 more cycles and you will have raised over $90,000, touched 70,000 people, and have 3500 people further in their engagement. And so on and so on. Until you reach a point of saturation with your network. Think S-curve not J-curve, and its determined by the extent that the social network that connects the people is exhausted.
When to use Viral Strategies
Are viral engagements applicable in every situation, absolutely not! You must have the right mix of high value experience, coupled with a value system that encourages sharing, and a network of people that is large enough. In addition you must also have the right online tools and system in place that allows for that sharing to happen easily and continually fosters ongoing sharing.
How do you use Viral Engagement? Does the above match with what you have found?
