Daniel's notes on Contagious

Why do some products, ideas, and behaviors succeed when others fail? • Quality: One reason some products and ideas become popular is that they are just plain better. • Price: Another reason products catch on is attractive pricing. Not surprisingly, most people prefer paying less rather than more. • Advertising: Ads also plays a role. Consumers need to know about something before they can buy it. While these contribute to success of a product, they are not the whole story.

Principle 1: Social Currency How does it make people look to talk about a product or idea? Most people would rather look smart than dumb, rich than poor, and cool than geeky. Just like the clothes we wear and the cars we drive, what we talk about influences how others see us. It's social currency.

Knowing about cool things—like a blender that can tear through an iPhone—makes people seem sharp and in the know. So to get people talking we need to craft messages that help them achieve these desired impressions. We need to find our inner remarkability and make people feel like insiders.

Principle 2: Triggers How do we remind people to talk about our products and ideas? Triggers are stimuli that prompt people to think about related things. Peanut butter reminds us of jelly and the word "dog" reminds us of the word "cat." People often talk about whatever comes to mind, so the more often people think about a product or idea, the more it will be talked about.

Principle 3: Emotion When we care, we share. So how can we craft messages and ideas that make people feel something? Naturally contagious content usually evokes some sort of emotion. Blending an iPhone is sur-prising. A potential tax hike is infuriating. Emotional things often get shared. So rather than harping on function, we need to focus on feelings. But as we'll discuss, some emotions increase sharing, while others actually decrease it. So we need to pick the right emotions to evoke. We need to kindle the fire. Sometimes even negative emotions may be useful.

Principle 4: Public Can people see when others are using our product or engaging in our desired behavior? The famous phrase "Monkey see, monkey do" captures more than just the human tendency to imitate. It also tells us that it's hard to copy something you can't see. Making things more observable makes them easier to imitate, which makes them more likely to become popular. So we need to make our products and ideas more public. We need to design products and initiatives that advertise themselves and create behavioral residue that sticks around even after people have bought the product or espoused the idea.

Principle 5: Practical Value How can we craft content that seems useful? People like to help others, so if we can show them how our products or ideas will save time, improve health, or save money, they'll spread the word. But given how inundated people are with information, we need to make our message stand out. We need to understand what makes something seem like a particularly good deal. We need to highlight the incredible value of what we offer-monetarily and otherwise. And we need to package our knowledge and expertise so that people can easily pass it on.

Principle 6: Stories What broader narrative can we wrap our idea in? People don't just share information, they tell stories. But just like the epic tale of the Trojan Horse, stories are vessels that carry things such as morals and lessons. Information travels under the guise of what seems like idle chatter. So we need to build our own Trojan horses, embedding our products and ideas in stories that people want to tell. But we need to do more than just tell a great story. We need to make virality valuable. We need to make our message so integral to the narrative that people can't tell the story without it.

People talked about the hundred-dollar cheesesteak at Barclay Prime because it gave them Social Currency, was Triggered (high frequency of cheesesteaks in Philadelphia), Emotional (very surprising), Practically Valuable (use-ful information about high-quality steakhouse), and wrapped in a Story.

After analyzing hundreds of contagious messages, products, and ideas, we noticed that the same six "ingredients," or prin-ciples, were often at work. Six key STEPPS, as I call them, that cause things to be talked about, shared, and imitated: Social Currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical Value, Stories

"Self-sharing" follows us throughout our lives. This desire to share our thoughts, opinions, and experiences is one reason social media and online social networks have become so popular. People blog about their preferences, post Facebook status updates about what they ate for lunch, and tweet about why they hate the current government. As many observers have commented, today's social-network-addicted people can't seem to stop sharing-what they think, like, and want—with everyone, all the time.

Indeed, research finds that more than 40 percent of what people talk about is their personal experiences or personal rela-tionships. Similarly, around half of tweets are "me" focused, covering what people are doing now or something that has happened to them. Why do people talk so much about their own attitudes and experiences? It's more than just vanity; we're actually wired to find it pleasurable.

Harvard neuroscientists Jason Mitchell and Diana Tamir found that disclosing information about the self is intrinsically rewarding. They found that sharing personal opinions activated the same brain circuits that respond to rewards like food and money. So talking about what you did this weekend might feel just as good as taking a delicious bite of double chocolate cake.

not surprisingly, people prefer sharing things that make them seem entertaining rather than boring, clever rather than dumb, and hip rather than dull. Consider the flip side. Think about the last time you considered sharing something but didn't. Chances are you didn't talk about it because it would have made you (or someone else) look bad.

Word of mouth, then, is a prime tool for making a good impression—as potent as that new car or Prada handbag. Think of it as a kind of currency. Social currency. Just as people use money to buy products or services, they use social currency to achieve desired positive impressions among their families, friends, and colleagues.

So to get people talking, companies and organizations need to mint social currency. Give people a way to make themselves look good while promoting their products and ideas along the way. There are three ways to do that: (1) find inner remarkability; (2) leverage game mechanics; and (3) make people feel like insiders.

Talking about remarkable things provides social currency. Remarkable things are defined as unusual, extraordinary, or worthy of notice or attention. Something can be remarkable because it is novel, surprising, extreme, or just plain interesting. But the most important aspect of remarkable things is that they are worthy of remark. Worthy of mention. Learning that a ball of glass will bounce higher than a ball of rubber is just so noteworthy that you have to mention it.

Remarkable things provide social currency because they make the people who talk about them seem, well, more remarkable. We all want to be liked. The desire for social approval is a fundamental human motivation. If we tell someone a cool fact it makes us seem more engaging. If we tell someone about a secret bar hidden inside a hot dog restaurant, it makes us seem cool. Sharing extraordinary, novel, or entertaining stories makes people seem more extraordinary, novel, and entertaining. It makes them more fun to talk to, more likely to get asked to lunch, and more likely to get invited back for a second date.

The key to finding inner remarkability is to think about what makes something interesting, surprising, or novel. Can the product do something no one would have thought possible (such as blend golf balls like Blendtec)? Are the consequences of the idea or issue more extreme than people ever could have imagined?