{"id":64,"date":"2009-07-19T23:43:32","date_gmt":"2009-07-20T04:43:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yupingliu.com\/wordpress\/2009\/07\/19\/what-makes-people-pass-along-your-content\/"},"modified":"2010-03-17T02:32:56","modified_gmt":"2010-03-17T07:32:56","slug":"what-makes-people-pass-along-your-content","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yupingliu.com\/wordpress\/2009\/07\/19\/what-makes-people-pass-along-your-content\/","title":{"rendered":"What Makes People Pass Along Your Content?"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you are involved in social media or viral marketing, most likely you have wondered how to increase the passing-along of your viral content. My co-author Michelle Rogerson<\/a> and I have been wondering about the same question too in our research project on the spreading of user-generated content online. As the starting point, we conducted an exploratory survey to find out people’s general tendency to share information online and what makes them more or less likely to share information with others. Using snowballing technique, we were able to gather responses from 156 Internet users.\u00a0 These users’ ages ranged from 18 to 62 with a median age of 30.\u00a0 46% of these users were males and 54% were females. Here I share with you some key findings from the survey.<\/p>\n

“If my friend shares something with me, I will view it. But don’t really expect me to pass it on.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

We asked our respondents how likely they are to view information shared by someone they know, and over 60% of them agreed that it is quite likely (7 or higher on a 10-point scale).\u00a0 This is good news because in the case of viral campaigns, encouraging people to share information with their friends is likely to increase the reach of the campaign. The bad news we found, however, is that way fewer of them would further pass on the information to their respective friends.\u00a0 Less than 20% of them said they are likely to pass on information shared with them by their friends.\u00a0 Interestingly, when asked the same question about information consumers found online themselves rather than shared by their friends, those who selected likely to pass on information increased to about 30%.\u00a0 The lesson here is that first-order word-of-mouth (consumers passing on information they found themselves) is more likely to happen than second-order word-of-mouth (consumers passing on information that are found by their friends). Therefore, companies engaging in word-of-mouth campaigns should still try to spread the word to as many “seeds” as possible rather than counting on a few starting points.<\/p>\n

\"Click
\n\"Share<\/p>\n

“Make me believe that the information is relevant to my friends and I will pass it on.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

The survey contained an open-ended question asking the respondents to list the factors that would make them more likely to share information online.\u00a0 The dominant reason listed (by 35% of the sample) was relevance to the friends that they are passing the information on to.\u00a0 This is perhaps not surprising considering that few of us want to jam our friends’ inbox with junk information.\u00a0 For companies, this means an opportunity to encourage passing-along by demonstrating the content’s relevance to a consumer’s social circle.\u00a0 Financial incentives offered to friends by some referral programs is an example of this approach. The second most widely listed reason was something funny.\u00a0 Apparently, we as human beings like to share laughter with others.\u00a0 Below are the top five reasons the respondents cited ranked by frequency:<\/p>\n