Proof that Savvy Social Media Users are the Most Contagious Viral Seeds
26 08 2008This is a guest post by Dan Zarrella, social and viral marketing scientist. He has put together a viral content sharing report and below is an expansion and exploration of some of the data uncovered by that report.
The research I did on viral content sharing shows that frequent users of social web technologies like Twitter, blogs, and social news and networking sites tend to share online content with more people, more often than those that do not. This means that for marketers these users can be a powerful vector for making content go viral.
While this may sound like some what of a “duh” statement, the concept of “influencers” has been much debated recently. While there is data that individuals give more attention to content passed to them from friends as opposed to A-list bloggers, the fact still remains that there are segments of users who spread content more prolifically than the rest. And by their very nature as savvy social media users, these viewers engage in online activity that makes them easy to target.
We know that people who read Digg, Reddit, Propeller and the like tend to have higher viral reach and sharing frequency than those who do not, so make sure your content appears on these sites. The same applies to those who read blogs, and use Twitter. When it comes time to seed your content, be sure to put it in the path of these extra-contagious users.
An interesting detail of this data is that while frequent users of Facebook and web forums share content with more people and more often in some aspects, generally they’re not as virulent as the users of less-mainstream technologies (with the exception of blog readers). This may be due to the fact that users of sites like Twitter and Digg tend to be early adopters, as opposed to the less-geeky Facebook audience; which seems to indicate that geeks share more content online than non-geeks.
When I segmented these high reach and frequency users, I found that they displayed useful preference trends. When compared to average web users they share more content via IM as opposed to email or Facebook messaging, and they share more news and opinion than humor. When these users share content one-to-one with their friends, they prefer blogs and social news sites to mainstream sites, but that aversion to mainstream media disapears when they share in a one-to-many fashion (broadcast sharing like submitting to Digg, blogging and Tweeting). Again as these users are important viral seeding vectors, we should listen to their preferences and give them news or opinion with short, clean links ideal for instant messaging, and lay off the “funny” email chain letters.
This is a small part of the large data presented in the full report I did on the results of my survey, if you want to know more, be sure to read the rest of my viral content sharing report.
Dan Zarrella is a social and viral marketing scientist, you can read his blog here or follow him on Twitter here.
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed, or follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
Very nice research, Dan. I appreciate you taking a professional approach.
Really interesting-I love it when numbers back up statements:-) The point of why frequent users patterns make them more likely to come in contact with viral content is important to consider when targeting an audience.
@brett thanks!
@kara also, thanks. and yeah its a pet peeve of mine in the SMM world when nothing backs up statements.
Dan Zarrellas last blog post..Viral Content Sharing Survey Report
Dan,
Thanks for this article. its very useful, and I may use the results to motivate my organization to be more forward thinking.
However, one very popular method of sharing that isn’t explicitly called out in the report is Wikis. I assume that they would fall under “forums” and “how-to and instructional”, though either seems to fall short of invoking wikis in my book. I’ve probably read a dozen wikipedia articles in the last 48 hours.
did you make a decision (explicitly or otherwise) to exclude wikis, or do you believe the data on them can be teased out in some way?
I humbly suggest that you include them in any followup research on this topic you do.
Nu
Nus last blog post..How to Eliminate Most Telemarketing Calls by Leveraging Technology & Common Sense
Fantastic research, thank you for taking all this time to research this Dan. I must agree with you, it’s the net savvy people who are always engaged in the social media spheres, so they’re the ones who are eating up all the news which is floating around.
Chris Ms last blog post..Earth Dance Cape Town is almost here!
Nice little bit of analysis. Thanks for taking the time to do this and sharing it. I’m clicking through to the full report…
-rico!
[...] Proof that Savvy Social Media Users are the Most Contagious Viral Seeds Like this post? Subscribe to the RSS feed and get lots more! Leave a comment or trackback from your own site. Posted in Marketing Book Reviews, Social Media, Team Reading [...]
[...] guest post by Dan Zarrella on NowSourcing provides some fascinating information into how savvy social media users share and spreading content [...]
Very useful research. Thank you for sharing it with us!
The figures sure do show that a little time and effort marketing to “contagious” users will get your name and business out there. Just make sure you are eventually reaching your target audience in order for it all to be worthwhile.
Good luck everyone!
Simon Slade, Doubledot Medias last blog post..1
Nice charts, looks interesting…but…
“The research I did on viral content sharing shows that frequent users of social web technologies like Twitter, blogs, and social news and networking sites tend to share online content with more people, more often than those that do not.”
Conversely, those people who don’t use social media a lot don’t tend to share things online.
Couldn’t that have been taken as read. Apologies if I’ve missed the point…
David Bradleys last blog post..How to Get Free Books
[...] seeding methods will expose as prolific an audience as possible to the message. My research has shown that savvy social media users tend to share content more often and with more people than normal web [...]
[...] “The Secret of…” but this is an overly-obvious marketing ploy and savvy users (who are the most contagious sharers) will see right through this, so try to develop a feeling of exclusivity and rarity more subtly. [...]