The document discusses how ideas spread through social media using memetics and epidemiological models. It explains that for an idea to spread, it needs exposure, awareness, and motivation. Factors that influence spread include seed size, influencers, personalization, avoiding link fatigue, helping audiences look cool, novelty, scarcity, and addressing information voids. The document also discusses performance, reputation, social exchange, imitation, social proof, and combined relevance as factors that influence whether people share content. It provides tips on optimizing campaigns based on these factors.

1. The Science of Social Media
How to engineer contagious ideas.
Dan Zarrella
Social Media Scientist

2. Unicorns and
Rainbows

3. Unicorns & Rainbows Myth:
Don’t call yourself a
guru.

4. Science:
`

5. Ideas do not
spread because
they are “good.”

6. Meme:
A unit of cultural
inheritance.

7. Our world
is made of
memes.

8. Memetics:
The study of
cultural transfer.

9. Variation
+ Competition
Evolution

10. Takeaway:
Try lots of campaigns
and iterate on what
works.

11. R0
Reproduction Rate
(The average number of new infections a
single infection case will cause)

12. Selection
pressure: a factor that
reduces R0.

13. The variation
best suited to
pressures wins.

14. Fruit Flies
Fecundity
Longevity
Elephants

15. ReTweets
Fecundity
Longevity
Religions

16. R0 >1 Epidemic
R0 =1 Endemic
R0 <1 Die out

17. Myth:
All “viral” ideas spread
exponentially.

18. Seed
Spread

19. Reality:
Most ideas have an
R0 under 1.

23. If I’m going to spread
your idea 3 things have
to happen…

24. Exposure
Awareness
Motivation

25. As marketers we can
optimize for each step…

26. Reach Exposure
Awareness
Motivation

27. Seeds

28. Let R0 = .1
•If seed = 10 •If seed = 100,000
•Generation 2 = 1 •Generation 2 = 10,000
•Generation 3 < 1 •Generation 3 = 1,000
•Generation 4 = 100
•Generation 5 = 10
•Generation 6 = 1

29. Big Seeds

33. Takeaway:
Audience size does
matter.

34. Influencers

35. `

36. `

37. Takeaway:
Find and target your
influencers.

38. Exposure
Awareness
Attention
Motivation

39. Breaking through
the noise

40. `

41. Takeaway:
Bigger & louder
works – to a point.

42. Selective attention:
hearing your name across
a crowded,
noisy room.

43. Takeaway:
Personalize: talk to
your audience.

44. Avoiding crowds

45. `

46. `

47. `

48. Takeaway:
Avoid link fatigue.

49. Exposure
Awareness
Sharing Motivation

50. Why do people share?

51. Performance:
Social media users are always
performing in front of a crowd
of their friends.

52. Reputation:
People share content to increase
their reputations.

53. Takeaway:
Help your audience
look cool.

54. Social exchange

55. “… the more valuable the sentiment or
activity the members exchange with
one another, the greater the average
frequency of interaction of the
members.”
Social Behavior as Exchange
George C. Homans

56. Novelty

57. Scarcity

58. Warnings

59. Information
voids

60. Takeaway:
Don’t let information
voids form.

61. Imitation

62. Social Proof

63. “We view a behavior as more correct…
to the degree that we see others
performing it”
-Robert Cialdini

64. Information
cascades

65. A
? ? ? ? ?
B

66. Which restaurant would
you pick?

67. A
B

71. The goliath
effect

72. The villain
is wronging
the victim.

73. Communal
Recreation

76. Zombies Marketing
Me

77. Anytime my friends see an article
about “marketing to zombies”
they send it to me.

78. Takeaway:
Use combined
relevance.

79. What do people
share?

83. Gossip is just news
running ahead of itself in a
red satin dress.
-Liz Smith

85. “…advertisements that were
both original and familiar
attracted the largest amount of
attention…”
Breaking Through the Clutter: Benefits of Advertisement Originality and
Familiarity for Brand Attention and Memory
Rik Pieters, Luk Warlop and Michel Wedel 2002

86. New/Old

87. Most ReTweetable Words & Phrases
1. you 11. please retweet
2. twitter 12. great
3. please 13. social media
4. retweet 14. 10
5. post 15. follow
6. blog 16. how to
7. social 17. top
8. free 18. blog post
9. media 19. check out
10. help 20. new blog post

88. Takeaway:
Don’t forget calls-to-
action.

90. Least ReTweetable Words & Phrases
1. game 11. well
2. going 12. sleep
3. haha 13. gonna
4. lol 14. hey
5. but 15. tomorrow
6. watching 16. tired
7. work 17. some
8. home 18. back
9. night 19. bored
10. bed 20. listening

95. Takeaway:
Don’t talk about
yourself so much.

96. Dan Zarrella
@DanZarrella