What Makes a Story Go Viral?

Why do some things posted on social media go viral? What do they have in common?

That was the question raised by Maria Konnikova in the Jan. 21 issue of the New Yorker. 

In the article Konnikova references research by Jonah Berger and Katherine Milkman of the University of Pennsylvania, who analyzed about 7,000 articles that had appeared in the New York Times in 2008 to see what distinguished items that made the most-e- mailed list.

Through their research, they found that two features predictably determined an article’s success: how positive its message was and how much emotion it provoked.

Just how arousing each emotion was also made a difference. Stories that might make readers angry or anxious—about a political scandal or a risk for cancer—were as likely to be shared as one about cute pandas.

Berger and Milkman went on to test their findings in a more controlled setting. They presented students with content and observed their propensity to pass it along.

Again, they found the same patterns. Amusing and positive stories were shared more frequently than less amusing ones, and stories that elicited anger were shared more than moderate ones.

How a story is framed also affected its virality.

A story about someone who was injured that focused on the preventable cause of the injury was shared less frequently than one that emphasized how the injured person was overcoming that injury—even though it was the same story.

The findings have been replicated by other studies that found that videos that make people angry or inspire them are more likely to be shared. 

Berger has captured his findings in his new book Since his initial foray into the nature of sharing, Berger has gone on to research and test a variety of viral-promoting factors, which he details in his new book Contagious: Why Things Catch On.

According to Berger, while emotion and arousal still top the list, there are other factors.

One is what he calls social currency—something that makes people feel that they’re not only smart, but in the know. 

I would call it the mirroring effect; people are interested in knowing what others will think of them if they share something.

Before they share something, they may wonder: “How will this make me look if I share it? Will I look smart? That I care?”

The presence of a memory-inducing trigger is also important, Berger says; we share what we know or are thinking about. 

In media relations, this is known simply as currency—something that others are already talking about is more likely to be shared because people know about it. 

Finally, the quality of the story itself is a predictor of going viral, he says.

“People love stories. The more you see your story as part of a broader narrative, the better,” Berger says. 

In other words, a compelling, well-written story will be seen as worth sharing.

Well-written stories that are positive and arouse emotions—those are the ones that go viral, according to the researchers. 

The challenge for non-profits is that, somewhere along the way, many came to believe that stories needed to be drained of emotion and personality.

Somehow we came to believe that if we simply presented the facts of the case or detailed the scope of the injustice, people would respond. 

Unfortunately, lists of numbers of people who are hungry or in need rarely move us, or make us share that information.

For that, we need our hearts to be touched.

For more on this topic, check my post Why Your Brain Wants to Help One Person, But not Millions.   

Also see Boiling Over to Get Media Coverage for a local example of how one group managed to get media attention by hooking their cause to a story in the news.

Mike Duffy, Nigel Wright, the PMO and the First and Second Rules of Media Relations

The troubles besetting the Prime Minister’s Office, and the Prime Minister himself, over the Mike Duffy affair bring to mind a column by Don Martin of the National Post.

Written back in 2008, when the PMO was engaged in another communications disaster, Martin provided two simple rules for good media relations and communications.

First, tell the truth

Second, never lie.

It’s also good advice for avoiding trouble with the law, not to mention getting re-elected.

Lying to the media is probably the worst sin a media relations professional can commit. (Exaggerated claims is a close second.) 

By not telling the truth, communicators risk poisoning their relations with reporters. And once trust is lost with the media, it’s hard to get back.

Plus, it never works, as the courtroom drama in Ottawa these days is showing—someone will always spill the beans.

And if that doesn't happen, reporters are enterprising people. Their job requires them to probe, research, ask questions and investigate—and be naturally suspicious.

If the truth is out there, they will find it. 

When they find it, and if you have been lying, it will not be a good experience for you or the organization you represent.

Not only will it cast a pall over your relations with reporters, it will jeopardize the reputation of your organization and cast the net of suspicion even wider to current and potential donors.

And any goodwill you have created over years of diligent and careful media relations will be lost—maybe never to return.

As Martin put it: “One lie and a flack is a liar forever. And that's the truth.”

For more on this topic, read "The First Rule of Crisis Management: Don't. Lie." by Scott Reid, a political analyst with CTV and formerly part of the PMO under Paul Martin, in the Ottawa Citizen.

Politics, Communications and Digital-Only Voters

As a communicator today, I know that the world is going digital.

Long gone are the days when large groups of people of all ages read a newspaper, listened to the radio or watched TV news.

The result? More time and energy devoted to social media.

(A sign of the changing times is that more non-profits today are hiring social media specialists—a job description that hardly existed even five years ago.)

Now politicians are adapting to this new reality.

An new study by Abacus Data for Google Canada found that 30 percent of all eligible voters in the 2015 election will get their information about politics only online.

As reported by the Globe and Mail, these “digital-only” voters—people who don’t watch TV news, listen to radio or read a newspaper—are typically young. But a fifth of eligible voters 50 years or older also say they are digital-only, too.

“Traditional broadcast communications are just not going to reach them,” says Abacus CEO David Coletto.

Overall, TV is still the main source of information about politics for most Canadians, with 33 per cent of respondents identified television as their primary information source. 

The Internet is close behind, with 30 percent, while for 19 percent its newspapers, 13 percent said radio and 4 percent identified word of mouth.

Respondents were also asked about what kind of information they search online. Seventy per cent said they either frequently, fairly often or occasionally looked for political news stories online, while 63 per cent said they searched for information about politicians and 60 per cent said they turned to the Internet to find out what parties stand for.

Despite the digital shift in recent years, Canada’s political parties still spend most of their advertising budgets on broadcast, probably because more older people mostly watch TV, and this is the demographic that is (currently) most likely to vote.

There’s more bang for the buck, in other words.

Of course, that's not the whole story; ads or stories on TV or a newspaper often end up online, anyway. So it's not like there's no digital reach. It just isn't the first way that political parties reach out to voters.

This is not unlike most non-profits, and for similar reasons. Going viral on Facebook is great, but it doesn’t bring in much money compared to a print appeal.

But the world is changing, and political parties and non-profits need to change with it. Who will be brave enough to go first and go all-digital?  

More Lessons from the World of Sports, or "News-Like News"

Earlier, I wrote about what non-profit communicators could learn from the world of professional wrestling. Here’s another lesson from the world of sports (if that’s what wrestling could be called), this time from ESPN.

In an article in by Derek Thompson in Atlantic, he notes that ESPN has built its brand on sports news. But on social media, straight sports news isn’t a hot or appealing commodity.

"What is least shareable is the final score, or how many points each team has,” says Nate Ravitz of ESPN.

What people want to read and share, he says, are the stories that make athletes relatable or exceptional.

"It’s stuff that is outside of the day-to-day construct of sports,” he says “It’s Rob Gronkowski’s cat. It’s a coach dancing in the locker room. It’s the moments we have conversations about, and we want to tell it the way you would tell your friend at the bar."

What does this mean for non-profit communicators? While it is tempting to share the “score”—how many people are made hungry in a drought, the size of the hurricane, or the number of people who will be afflicted by a disease—that’s not what garners attention on social media.

What people want to hear, and what they will share, are the stories of people who are hungry, who lost their homes, or who are dealing with the disease.

Thompson also goes on in the articles to note that ESPN is also seeing mobile as its future.

Although sports on the big screen is a staple of networks like ESPN, most people are not near a TV when a sports story breaks. They do have their phones with them, though.

But even there they are trying to avoid just giving the score.

Things that grab people’s attention on social media are what Thompson calls “news-like” news. Again, this would be the stories behind the news, stories about the athletes in the news.

Read the article in Atlantic here.