Lever for Success: Being Liked

I was a bit floored the other day when I heard someone conflating shareability with viral on a video project. 

The conversation was along the lines of "we should not aim for shareability so much on this video as  less than 1% of all videos online go viral".

Shareability is not and should not be equated with viral reach. I can almost understand the confusion as shareability is a cofactor of viral (meaning that something that can not be shared is unlikely to ever go viral.)

And please don't misunderstand. I don't advocate trying to create viral videos. 

But to give up on designing content that is shareable is to throw in the towel. It is to surrender the value we bring as an agency. Our goal should always be to create things that resonate and bring enough value to our audiences so as to be worth sharing with their friends and associates. 

But how do we create things that are more shareable?

It's easy to say but not so easy to implement.

Here is a quote from Mike Arauz that I have referenced many times.  

“If I tell my Facebook friends about your brand, it’s not because I like your brand, but rather because I like my friends.”

It is a wonderful way to capture the shift of thinking required to create content that is shareable.

And it is also just the tip of the wedge.

This presentation from PodCampTO got me thinking hard about why we share and to what ends we participate online.

Psychology of websites and social media campaigns

I've long been a follower and lover of Cialdini and this presentation was a great way to sum up a lot of Cialdini's work and how it might apply to the digital realm.

But I think it is larger than this.

There is no greater social pressure than the desire to belong. It is captured in our desire to be liked and in the social proof.

Take a moment and remember back to a time when you received something really funny or moving and you went to share it with your friends only to abort and not share it.

This happens to me all the time. I receive something from one circle of friends and then choose not to share it with a wider or different group of friends.

Who I am is not a constant. Rather, I belong to a number of social circles and each moment I share something is actually a decision I make, albeit most often not consciously. A decision that takes into account how this will make me appear and whether this will be well received from the circle I am about to share it with.

In fact, I might propose a new quote.

“If I tell my Facebook friends about your brand, it’s because I want to be liked by the friends I'm sharing it with.”

This is something the savviest brands already know. It is about creating content that references key social cues that resonate with a group and send an insider signal of belonging, or what my good (&brilliant) friend Paul McEnany calls acculturativity.