Manhattan Marketing Maven

Why People Share and How To Get Your Share

Now that two-thirds of adult Internet users are members of a social network; roughly half of all American adults, it is probably time to understand who shares and why. 

Sharing has become a dominant theme and meme in social networking. For some it’s the raison d’etre for signing up. For others it’s the power behind voyeuristic thrills. Some analysts believe that the propensity to share is gender-based. They argue that women, who are natural networkers and nurturers, are much more likely to share than men. Yet others, citing the preponderance of men passing along images and links, argue that beyond gender; a psychological dimension separates the sharers from the pack. 

Fortunately the New York Times, eager to monetize its content and promote viral activity, commissioned Latitude Research to figure all this out. The resulting study titled “The Psychology of Sharing” was presented at the ANA Digital and Social Media Conference and the slides are available, but not downloadable, on Slideshare. 

The survey and ethnographic study of 2500 medium to heavy online users found that sharing is an act of friendship, consideration and self-fulfillment for most people. 84% of sharers spread the word about favorite causes or brands. 73% say that they process information more deeply in the process of sharing it with others. 

The act of transmission or re-transmission allows 68% to feel more involved in the world and enables 68%to give people a better sense of who they are and what they care about. Sharing is simultaneously philanthropic and self-revelatory. Sharing also nourishes relationships and brings entertaining or informative content to others. 

Evidently sharing is caring, though the preferred medium for sharing, even among active social networkers, is e-mail, which is considered more serious and more private. E-mail will be seen. It is intimate, unlike one-to-many forums, and is more likely to provoke an answer or a response. 

Sharers come in different shapes and flavors. This study delineates six distinct sharing personas. Altruists are mostly females wrapped up in spreading the word about favorite causes. Careerists zero-in on professional information and networking. Hipsters are the younger versions of Altruists and Careerists. Boomerangs are the nudniks of this world; the people who like to stir the pot and incite everyone around them. Connectors are would-be Careerists, who don’t share as frequently. And Selectives are would-be Altruists, who have fewer causes and fewer reasons to pass along content. In the act of sharing there’s something in it for me and for you. Dual motivations drive frequent sharers. 

But for the mercenary brand seeking more than it’s fair share of sharing, the trick is to understand the motivations of sharers and design messaging and campaigns to appeal to those native instincts. According to the Times, there are five keys to success: 

Appeal to the sharing motivations. Make sure that the content you present engages the likely sharer and is worthy of being passed along. 

Build Trust. You can only produce content in areas that consumers perceive you to be competent and believable in. This also requires a respect for your audience and a sensibility for how the message is framed. 

KISS. Simpler is better. Rarely is a complex or convoluted message passed along efficiently. Everyone has to get it and it has to be simple and motivating enough to share. 

Use Humor. Notice that jokes and funny images get much more action that flat out statements and images.  Life is tough, if you can liven or lighten things up without challenging the sensibilities of your audience, you will engender more sharing. 

Create Urgency. People talk more when they perceive a need for immediacy or action. That’s why offers and deals travel as fast as they do. This is also true for trending topics. People intuitively understand news and social media cycles. They want to participate in the conversation before the topic becomes old news. If you can energize your content with a sense of urgency, it will fly farther faster. 

Sharing is a psyche game. David Kaplan argues “Social media is all about serendipity, where a post can get lost in the shuffle of a Twitter or a Facebook stream.” But like most games, the rules and the parameters are beginning to emerge more clearly in ways that can help marketers use social and digital sharing to optimal effect.

 

Twitter's Changing Complexion

New research suggests that the laws of natural selection are affecting Twitter. Active users and a critical mass of voyeurs dominate tweeting. The One-Time Charlies are disappearing. The result is a homogenized community that has embraced the format and acts in predictable ways. 

The ~20 million people who like Twitter really like and use it. And the rest do something else. Increasingly Twitter is positioning itself as separate and distinct from Facebook, Tumblr and the other social media, if for no other reason that to carve out a value proposition for advertisers. You might recall that about a year ago, Twitter executives were expressing their desire to become “the pulse of the planet” and distancing themselves from being defined as a “social network.” 

The new posture differentiates Twitter users in terms of their brand loyalty and their value as advocates and amplifiers for brands.  According to the data from ExactTarget, active twitter users, the people who follow brands on Twitter, are 3X more likely to “amplify the influence of the brand” than their counterparts on Facebook. When you add this data point to the fact that 73% of active Twitter users say they want to accumulate larger audiences, you end up with interest, reach and motive sufficient get more brands to pay more attention to this platform. 

The pitch is that Twitter people are bigger blabbers so that if a brand can engage them, they will materially increase the reach of a brand’s message. The RTBs (reasons to believe) that active Twitter users should be part of your communications arsenal are: 

• 72% of active Twitter users are bloggers
• 70% comment on other blogs
• 61% write at least 1 product review per month
• 56% write articles for third-party sites
• 53% post videos online
• 50% contribute to wiki sites
• 48% share deals and coupons 

Active content creators and re-tweeters can have more influence on your brand than passive readers. On the basis of these data points TheNextWeb Blog concluded, “What happens on Twitter doesn’t stay on Twitter.” 

Twitter users expect brevity and intimacy. They believe that they can get under the skins of the brands they love and can get inside information, direct contact with the company and either first dibs on new products or services and advance notice about deals. They are eager to interact and quick to broadcast their positive and negative brand experiences in real time. They will reward brands that engage them well by passing the word along. 

This gives Twitter unique characteristics as a marketing tool. It gives marketers an incentive to devise a separate and distinct Twitter strategy with its own cadence and content.

 

Say "NO" to Social Media GRPs

The move to use GRPs (Gross Ratings Points) for measuring social media is a confluence of two corporate agendas rather than a real attempt to give brands a viable/realistic measurement tool. 

Facebook wants a shot at TV budgets and needs a way in. Nielsen needs to remain relevant and competitive in the digital world. But GRPs will add zero actionable insight for Facebook or Newsfeed marketers. 

These dominant players are looking to rig the game in their favor. Facebook totally controls access to the audience. Nielsen controls how things are measured. Both can manipulate the game to their own advantage. 

Listen closely, you can hear the pitch in your head. “We can now measure the relative reach of your postings and compare them with the reach of your TV spots using the same yardstick. Now you can easily plan and but social media and TV together or create the optimal media mix.” 

GRPs are a short hand that media guys use to figure reach and frequency for campaigns and limited time buys. They don’t tell you anything about impact of your message, time spent or exposure to your message or engagement; how users respond, react, re-post, share or comment on content. 

Gross Ratings Points and Total Ratings Points (TRPs) became the default measurement to generate a plan quickly when former broadcast planners and buyers became overnight digital media specialists in the late 1990s. Nielsen has trained a few generations of media planners, media buyers and clients so that this shorthand has become the default standard. 

Most working marketers believe that orthodox reliance on TRPs limits media creativity and obscures competitive media opportunities. But it’s a simple and easy calculation to justify a buy recommendation or to back into a budget number. 

Facebook totally controls reach, especially for marketers, with the EdgeRank algorithm. Research indicating that brand access to fan’s walls is less than 10 percent of posts threatens to kill the golden goose. If brands can’t get better access to the Facebook users who have friended us, there’s no way we’re going to pay the ad rates Zuckerberg fantasizes about. According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook is testing different filters and has hinted that they might even create an unfiltered newsfeed. 

Changing the filter and granting brands greater access will not only improve advertiser relations, but it will multiply the data Facebook can capture and re-sell to eager marketers. It might also provoke a considerable user backlash if endless ads appear in newsfeeds. 

More importantly GRPs don’t measure the stuff we need to know. We need to know what people do on Facebook, what they click or don’t, what content draws them in or keeps them on our page and how much they share what they find with their friends. GRPs offer no answers to these questions.