The 8 Elements of Contagious Ideas

In the research I’ve been doing over the past few years into why ideas spread, I’ve found a few common characteristics of contagious ideas across mediums and centuries. The list below contains those characteristics, and while its still an evolving set, the vast majority of successful memes I’ve studied have had some (or all) of them present. I’ve also tried to include takeaways, tactics you, as a marketer can use to apply these concepts to your viral campaigns. If you like this post, or any of my work, please, nominate me for a Shorty Award. Seeding The first group of people exposed to your meme are your seeds. Its easy and obvious to say that you should work to build your reach–your Twitter followers, your blog subscribers–but its harder to do than to prescribe. Especially in less early adopter categories, find those users who are using the bleeding edge social media technologies in that space and seed your ideas to them. Novelty Intuitiveness Relevance Utility Social Cascades Proselytism

Episode 27: Mindful Leadership | Up Close Podcast Download mp3 (18.1 MB) VOICEOVER Welcome to Melbourne University Up Close, a fortnightly podcast of research, personalities, and cultural offerings of the University of Melbourne, Australia. Up Close is available on the web at upclose.unimelb.edu.au That!|s upclose.u-n-i-m-e-l-b.edu.au. SIAN PRIOR Hello and welcome to Up Close, coming to you from Melbourne University, Australia. Well here! AMANDA SINCLAIR Thank you very much, Sian. SIAN PRIOR Well, in the business world as I mentioned, good leadership can be worth huge amounts of money, both to the businesses wise enough to employ good leaders, and to the leaders themselves as they increase their value in the employment market. SIAN PRIOR That brings up an interesting point. AMANDA SINCLAIR They do and in fact some leaders are very seductive. SIAN PRIOR So if it! SIAN PRIOR But how do you filter and decide what are the most important factors of all the information and input and relationships that a leader is grappling with ! SIAN PRIOR I!