Secrets of Viral Content: STEPPS Framework
Social Currency
Social Currency is the reason people are more likely to talk about something if it is secret. People share things to make themselves look good to others. There are three ways to make someone look good while promoting products and ideas: find inner remarkability, leverage game mechanics, and make people feel like insiders. All people want to achieve desired positive impressions among their families, friends, and colleagues.
Example: In Flywheel, at the front of the class, they have a leaderboard of who is doing the best. The winners can get certain discounts or prizes.
Triggers
Triggers are words, phrases, or images closely tied to a message. Triggers are things we see or hear in our daily lives that cause us to think about something else. Trigger marketing is about discovering the events in a consumer’s life that provoke their need for a certain product or service.
Example: When someone says “melts in your mouth,” others will say “M&M’s.” Or, when Gangnam Style is played, people think about pistachios.
Emotion
Emotion strives to evoke ‘awe’ – the sense of wonder and amazement that occurs when someone is inspired by great knowledge, beauty, and sublimity. Emotion tries to get people to care because when they care, they share. There are some emotions that actually decrease sharing (sadness), but the ones that increase sharing are: awe, contentment, and physiological arousal (goosebumps, laughing).
Example: A video of a 4-year-old singing “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” with her dad went viral (it was viewed 150 million times) and they even went on Ellen. This video arouses feelings of awe (because the girl is only 4 years old) and contentment (because she is cute).
Public
The key public component is “built to grow, built to show.” Publicity concerns the product or the idea that should be shown to people to spread among them. The more times people see it, the more chance that they will remember it and share the information among their friends.
Example: Lululemon bags are durable, and therefore people keep and use them. In that way, when people walk around with Lululemon bags, others are being exposed to the company, and without saying a word, the product is publicized.
Practical Value
News you can use; something useful that a product has that can save people money, makes them happier, improves health, and saves them time.
Make your product or idea stand out; make it clear why the product is so useful that people have to spread the word.
Example: Lookbook Store gives tips on how to wear certain types of clothes and quick clothing fixes.
Stories
- Information travels under the guise of idle chatter.
- Your product should be wrapped up/communicated in a shareable (human) story or narrative.
- Share stories, not information.
- Make sure that the story being highlighted cannot be told without your product or service.
Example: Extra gum commercial – In this commercial, the boy in the relationship draws every memorable and special moment the couple shares on an Extra gum wrapper. Then, when he proposes to the girl, he hangs up all of the wrappers with the drawings on the wall in the order that they happened, and then the last drawing is one of the boy proposing to the girl. The story highlighted in this commercial cannot be told without Extra gum and its wrappers. Therefore, it is successful as people will share it with others and will be forced to mention Extra gum.
Most Effective? Most Important for Sharing?
Stories are the most important for sharing. Stories bring all of the other aspects together as they can make us seem cool (social currency), they can cause us to associate certain things together so that when we see or hear something we think about the product or service (Triggers), they can cause us to feel awe, contentment, or physiological arousal (emotions), they can become viral and therefore be seen by many people (public), and they can show us something useful that a product has (practical value).
Example: Lands’ End Story (p.185)
Example: Dove Commercial p.192
Is There a Specific Combination Making Something More Appealing Than Another?
Social Currency and Stories (p. 188)
People like to tell stories that make them look good to others.