Do you know these 4 types of viral marketing that can spontaneously generate secondary dissemination?

The new shopping maxim for today’s consumers is: “Either provide the product as I desire, or I don’t want it”! Therefore, in order to gain the support and trust of consumers, it is very important to put the protection of consumers' vital interests in the first place from the perspective of consumers; it is undeniable that cost-effective online communication will become the main development direction in the future. Although online advertising has its outstanding " viral transmission " advantage, due to its "narrow caliber" and "short-term forgetting" characteristics on the Internet, the effect of online advertising communication has the characteristics of "rising fast and falling fast"!

To many people, so-called “ viral marketing ” is a kind of magic powder: sprinkle it on any product and hope it will become popular overnight. In fact, there is more than one method for viral marketing , and it is not a panacea that can be used everywhere. For viral transmission, the most basic element is "inception." Your goal is to embed or awaken an idea in other people's minds, tell them that this product can solve a problem, and arouse their curiosity. In other words, you need to think about a question: Why do potential users want to learn about and try your product?

The new shopping maxim for today’s consumers is: “Either provide the product as I desire, or I don’t want it”! Therefore, in order to gain the support and trust of consumers, it is very important to put the protection of consumers' vital interests in the first place from the perspective of consumers; it is undeniable that cost-effective online communication will become the main development direction in the future. Although online advertising has its outstanding "viral transmission" advantage, due to its "narrow caliber" and "short-term forgetting" characteristics on the Internet, the effect of online advertising communication has the characteristics of "rising fast and falling fast"! Therefore, how to make the virus spread spontaneously generate secondary spread is the key to the success of viral marketing; therefore:

Does this require the inclusion of incentive mechanisms in product and marketing plans? Or, when users create something tangible, shareable, like a photo or video, how do you get them to share it with others? When potential users see these contents, how can you guide them to “get on board” and become your new users?

1. There are only four types of viral marketing that can spontaneously generate secondary dissemination

Randall Collins, a famous contemporary American sociologist, has launched the "Interaction Ritual Chain" theory based on years of research, which provides a perfect solution to the above problems. Collins believes that interactive rituals are the most basic human activities, including formal ceremonies such as religious rituals and political rituals, as well as natural rituals without patterned procedures, such as conversations and physical touch. It is through interactive experiences that individuals are socialized, gradually transforming from a "natural person" to a "social person." The core mechanism of its operation is the high degree of mutual attention and emotional solidarity between subjects. Individuals in the interactive ritual chain form a sense of membership associated with cognitive symbols through emotional resonance. In such a process with causal connections and feedback loops, social interaction and identity are cleverly linked. The "interaction ritual chains" formed by people's encounters in specific situations will be aggregated together and gradually generate group membership .

Collins explored the generation of interactive rituals from an emotional perspective and formed the "interactive ritual chain" theory. The figure below presents the components, processes and results of interactive rituals. The core mechanism of this theory is mutual attention and emotional connection. As a mechanism of mutual concern, emotion and interaction, ritual forms a momentary shared existence. Through emotional resonance, ritual participants form symbols of group membership and enhance group solidarity; that is, when a high degree of mutual concern is combined with a high degree of emotional solidarity, a sense of identity as a "symbolic member" can be formed and recognized, and it also brings emotional energy to each participant, making them feel confident, enthusiastic and willing to do what they believe is morally permissible. In interactive rituals, emotional energy becomes a kind of capital. While people invest emotional energy in the process of interactive rituals, they also gain emotional benefits.

01 The four core elements of the interactive ritual chain

Collins argues that at the heart of interactive ritual is a process in which participants develop a shared focus and respond to each other's body's microrhythms and emotions. He also pointed out that interaction rituals are also a set of processes with causal relationships and feedback loops, with four main components or starting conditions:

1. group solidarity, a sense of membership;
2. The emotional energy of the individual, a feeling of confidence, elation, power, enthusiasm, and initiative in taking action;
3. Symbols that represent the group, that is, signs or other representations that make members feel connected to the collective;
4. Maintain the group and respect the moral sense of group symbols.

02 The core mechanism of the interactive ritual chain triggers viral marketing to spontaneously generate a secondary spread peak

Viral marketing has quickly won the hearts of users with its own advantages such as convenience, entertainment, and novelty. Based on the interactive ritual chain theory, viral marketing has become an activity loved by the audience. It not only provides a focus for group members and stimulates the emotional energy of individuals in participation, but also constantly creates and uses new group symbols, on this basis spontaneously generating secondary dissemination peaks!

03 There are only 4 viral marketing methods that can automatically generate secondary transmission peaks

For those companies that are successful in viral marketing, they have summarized many unique methods based on users and product characteristics. Here, I would like to sort out those common viral marketing methods; the first thing to emphasize is that sparking discussion is only the first step in a long journey. How to "teach" users to use appropriate language to introduce products to others? How to encourage users to share products with others? Only by solving these two core problems can viral marketing really start. Based on this, I have summarized and proposed the following four unique viral marketing methods that can spontaneously generate secondary transmission peaks:

2. Just use "Bao Bao Divorce" as an example to chat with you about "gossip"

Why are we so enthusiastic about "Wang Baoqiang's divorce", an event that has nothing to do with us? What factors caused the related gossip to spread virally? Let’s have a serious chat about “gossip” here. I believe it will be interesting and informative. In the early hours of Sunday morning, an explosive piece of news swept the public opinion circle - Wang Baoqiang published a divorce statement on Weibo because his wife cheated on him. One stone can cause a thousand ripples. Some babies sit up in fright at night, while others rarely see their eyes wide open in the early morning. The flame of gossip is spreading like wildfire.

How hot has Wang Baoqiang’s divorce incident become? Baidu Index shows that on August 14, the keyword "Wang Baoqiang" reached an index peak of 1,205,052. At the same time, the hot search index of the keyword "Wang Baoqiang" on Weibo reached 1,749,419. Although it did not surpass the peak of 2,882,297 when the article cheated on his wife on March 31, 2014, it undoubtedly topped the list of major entertainment events in 2016.

As of the afternoon of August 15, the #王宝强跌倒# Weibo topic had been read 4.2 billion times and discussed 1.103 million times, with Wang Baoqiang thus jumping to the top of the celebrity list. Behind this news there is a blazing flame of gossip, with a crowd of onlookers and self-media all "passionately" fueling the gossip fire. Perhaps many people have this confusion:

Why can’t I stop reading gossip about my baby? Why do we click on titles containing “Wang Baoqiang” or “cheating”? Why do we care about gossip? Where does the “pleasure” of consuming gossip come from? Is social media making us weirder?

Perhaps, returning to the principles of gossip dissemination can allow us to more clearly reflect on our own gossip consumption and dissemination behaviors and make more rational media judgments.

01 Why does the fire of gossip have the power to set the field ablaze?

In his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind , Yuval Noah Harari pointed out that we should never underestimate the power of gossip, as gossip is the result of the cognitive revolution. "For a social animal, this is the key to civilization. It is through gossip that humans can fully understand the relationship status in their tribe, know who is trustworthy and reliable, and expand their scale and develop more close and complex cooperation."

However, gossip has its limitations. In a tribe of less than 150 people, gossip alone might be enough to keep it running, but once this limit is exceeded, it will be impossible to build a larger civilization. So, in today's era, what social function does gossip have in modern society? What new communication characteristics does it have?

02 Six attributes of hot gossip: simple + unexpected + specific + credible + emotional + story

When studying the bizarre and absurd but resilient "urban legends", American scholars Chip Heath and Dan Heath discovered that if an idea wants to firmly grasp the audience's attention, it itself needs to have a certain stickiness, and this stickiness can be concretized into six information attributes: simple + unexpected + specific + credible + emotional + story.

This stickiness of information dissemination also applies to the spread of gossip. Let’s analyze the gossip about Wang Baoqiang’s divorce:

• Simple: celebrity spouses cheating and families breaking up is undoubtedly a simple entertainment news with low threshold and easy to digest;
• Surprise: The honest and simple Bao Bao, who always loves his wife, posted a blog late at night to expose the cheating scandal between his wife and his agent. It was a surprise.
• Story + Specificity + Credibility: If this gossip had only the isolated source of the divorce announcement, it might not have caused such a big ripple. And details such as "the Conan netizen who had discovered the clues long ago and took photos to keep them + the photos of the adultery scene + Ma Rong's angry rebuke when she hinted at the inside story" make this entertainment news into a "flesh and blood" story.
• Emotion: Wang Baoqiang's divorce statement can be said to have been a successful emotional mobilization of netizens. The intense emotional climax, including sympathy for the husband and accusations against the cheating men and women, has played a powerful role in promoting the spread of the incident.

03 The information chain lacks ambiguity, and gossip becomes the boat in the middle of the lake to reach the truth

In the rumor formula proposed by Allport and Sterman, the ambiguity of an event is proportional to the spreading energy of the rumor.

Rumor = (the event's) importance × (the event's) ambiguity ÷ public critical ability

Similarly, the fact that a gossip radiating ring centered on the divorce announcement can ferment to this point is closely related to the lack of integrity of the information itself.

In the case of Wang Baoqiang's divorce, apart from the brief statement released by himself with rigorous language logic, there has been no authoritative source reporting on the details of the incident. During the fermentation of public opinion, in addition to various early Weibo posts, many sources of information had no substantive content but were still forwarded on a large scale. It can be seen that netizens who are confused by the fog in front of them are rowing the "Gossip" boat tirelessly, striving to sail towards the center of the lake called truth, trying to use various information fragments to piece together their own "truth map."

04 Gossip as a social situation enables information exchange and individual opinion expression

Why can people enthusiastically sacrifice their precious Sundays and devote themselves to discussing topics that are "none of my business"? Perhaps we can examine another primitive motivation of human beings. Evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar points out that the real function of human language is socialization rather than communication. As a typical social animal, gossip is also a common social situation for humans.

The audience usually participates in gossip discussions with motivation. On the one hand, everyone sits together and talks about what they know, which not only provides something to talk about, but also allows each other to exchange and complete information. On the other hand, everyone has a desire to comment, and while we express our opinions, we also take this opportunity to reflect our emotional lives and intimate relationships.

05 Group norms and group identity mechanisms

In the era of social media, Weibo has long become a "carnival square" for gossip. In group communication based on social media, whenever a "conflict" plot occurs, the public will contribute their emotions without hesitation. This is because, under the influence of group suggestion and group infection mechanisms, the mainstream emotions in a group can spread at an abnormal speed. In the overall excited atmosphere, an emotion or an opinion can quickly form a "spiral of silence" effect.

On the one hand, netizens' emotional catharsis and one-sided comments are due to the fact that in an anonymous online environment, the dispersion and elimination of responsibility usually encourages the public to speak freely and without taboos; on the other hand, this situation of being on the "same team" with the group will allow the audience to gain a strong sense of group identity and consolidate their "correctness of opinions."

In a Weibo poll with 130,000 participants asking "What do you think of Wang Baoqiang's divorce?", the opinion supporting "I feel sorry for the baby, an honest man is being bullied!" received an overwhelming majority of 64.2%. In comparison, only 1.5% of netizens support the statement "Ma Rong said that the truth about good and evil may be reversed."

06 The ubiquitous desire to spy on celebrities and enjoy the pleasure of power reversal

Similar to the gossip gene that humans are born with, "voyeurism" as another native gene of humans is also another motive for explaining various public opinion events in the entertainment industry. The private side of celebrities has always been a subject of public curiosity. The audience, who usually looks up and gazes into the distance to spy on the celebrities' movements, have experienced a "power inversion" through gossip. Wang Baoqiang has revealed his own scars. Amid the vigorous public opinion mudslide of digging out the truth or standing idly by and commenting, the three parties seem to be in what Foucault called the "panopticon mechanism", while the "observers" and "judges" are the numerous ordinary people.

07 How does social media promote the evolution of gossip genes?

The concept of gossip has a long history and almost emerged with human social activities. Today, the emergence of social platforms such as Weibo, WeChat , and Zhihu is injecting a high-level genetic evolution into the spread of gossip.

08 Social media has become a cradle of gossip, and it is difficult to distinguish the truth from the falsehood of "social media revelations"

Cheating, catching an adulterer, property division, paternity testing, Wang Baoqiang supporting a female college student, DNA testing for the child, Wang Baoqiang is an active-duty soldier... Relying on the low threshold and fragmentation of information release on social platforms, Weibo, Tieba and other social platforms have become natural cradles of gossip. A variety of true and false "social revelations" continue to bombard the public's eyes and ears, and these rumors are almost entirely unsupported by authoritative sources of evidence.

The malicious intent and motives behind the highly imitated Weibo accounts impersonating the parties involved in posting explosive remarks are even more profound. Some Weibo accounts appeared, impersonating the parties involved and members of Wang Baoqiang's team, inciting public opinion through extreme words. For some audiences with limited ability to discern information, such deliberate "social revelations" continue to stir up the muddy gossip waters, becoming an unavoidable problem in the spread of gossip in the social age.

09 Self-media promotes topic diversity and fact-checking

On this sunny Sunday, many self-media people embraced this heavyweight hot topic with mixed feelings of love and hate. During the spread of Wang Baoqiang's divorce, two unique phenomena emerged in the self-media circle.

First, a large number of vertical self-media in finance, law, and maternal and child care have broken down the topic of the incident, interpreted the incident from multiple levels from their respective professional perspectives, and promoted the diversification of topic dissemination, making it start from entertainment gossip but not limited to gossip. However, we cannot make hasty conclusions about the motives of these public accounts, whether they tend to make rational analysis or just take advantage of the hot topics.

Second, a number of highly credible self-media have created a rational “clear stream of gossip fact-checking”. With the details of the incident unclear, netizens who were confused by the various sources of information placed high hopes on some self-media sources, and urged self-media people to get up overnight to write articles and verify the facts. For example, Zhuo Wei was once again "highly named" by netizens...

It is true that some self-media have made relatively objective and rational statements after trying their best to verify the facts, which has also played a positive role in calming public opinion.

10. The "Late Night Communication" of Hot Gossip

First there was the attack on a girl at the Huayi Hotel, and then there was the Bao Bao divorce incident. The viral spread of these explosive news that were released and fermented on social media in the early morning may also have been driven by the factor of "late-night communication studies." Some people analyzed that the purpose of choosing the early morning of the weekend was to reduce the spread of the incident. However, it is still due to the properties of the message. The release of big gossip on social media in the early morning has, to some extent, brought about a public opinion fermentation effect, or "successfully" completed staggered dissemination.

On the one hand, the human brain is not capable of rational thinking late at night, and under the influence of emotions, it is easy to follow the mainstream public opinion. On the other hand, late at night is the time when the media and all parties do not have time to react. In such a situation, the initial gossip released by the parties involved can easily take up the banner of public opinion guidance.

Conclusion

Viral marketing is a complex communication and persuasion system. It cannot be successfully implemented simply by having good content and finding insensitive users. From the perspective of gossip, this article explains that obtaining emotional energy is the most fundamental driving force of human behavior and is also the part that viral marketing can utilize. It is not only necessary to construct situations that contain a lot of "emotional energy", but also to guide individuals to participate in social interactions to obtain more emotional energy. Emotional energy does not only refer to the pleasure of "content". Emotional energy is obtained from the pleasure of individual information interaction, but also from the group level. Seeking social interaction and group connection is a greater emotional energy demand. In order for viral marketing content to infect a wide range of people and spread using the power of the Internet, it is necessary to understand the individual's "interactive" context and interactive needs.