Ryan Holiday is a marketer and publicist who specializes in manipulating blogs in service of his clients.
(…)
contrary to prevailing wisdom, that most original reporting in online media was done by smaller blogs, (…) by influencing small blogs today, one could alter what was in the Washington Post tomorrow.
Virality is most prevalent in stories with high emotional content, especially anger and awe.
Holiday had no problem with his work when the goal was to sell a product, but when the same tools started to be used to manipulate social and civic attitudes he stopped.
If the effects of this media manipulation were merely to drive customers to products they wouldn’t otherwise buy, Ryan would still probably be out there plying his trade. What caused him to reconsider his profession (and write Trust Me I’m Lying) was the increasing use of these manipulation techniques to spread political ideas, and, in the process, hurt individuals. In the second half of the book, he talks about how sites like Jezebel and Breitbart News use the techniques he pioneered to push product for American Apparel to maximize their own page-views by stoking outrage both among their supporters and their opponents. In his view, much of responsibility for the coarsening and polarization of politics and culture can be laid at the feet of professional manipulators like himself.
Using professional manipulators to change and/or incite public opinion is nothing new.
But the tools at their disposal are more insidious than ever.
Therefore, making caveat emptor your personal slogan makes more sense than ever.
A few days after Donald Trump was elected, 35-year-old Eric Tucker saw something suspicious: A cavalcade of large white buses stretched down main street near downtown Austin, Texas.
Tucker snapped a few photos and took to Twitter, posting the following message:
Tucker was wrong — a company called Tableau Software was actually holding a 13,000-person conference that day and had hired the buses.
OK, a wrong assumption by a social guy who had to tell his network.
But why didn’t the actual facts refute it when they were tweeted?
Economists concluded that it comes down to two factors. First, each of us has limited attention. Second, at any given moment, we have access to a lot of information — arguably more than at any previous time in history. Together, that creates a scenario in which facts compete with falsehoods for finite mental space. Often, falsehoods win out.
Also, people consider the source of information more than the info itself. Trusted source = valid info.
The tweet was shared 350,000 times on Facebook and 16,000 and Trump added his two cents.
The corrected information was shared only 29 times.
Why didn’t Tucker tweet his network a correction when he it turned out to be false?
“I’m … a very busy businessman and I don’t have time to fact-check everything that I put out there, especially when I don’t think it’s going out there for wide consumption,”
In other words, he couldn’t be bothered.
Research and economists aside, Tucker provided the real key.
People aren’t bothered whether it’s true or not.
They just care that they get their 15 seconds of fame.
Going viral is every marketer’s goal, especially entrepreneurs with a new product/service/experience that needs to rise above the noise in order to be noticed.
Going viral requires some luck, as do most successes, even if it’s the serendipitous kind (right time/right place), but it’s mostly method, as discussed previously.
Research by Thales S. Teixeira, an assistant professor in marketing at HBS, identified “four key steps: attracting viewers’ attention, retaining that attention, getting viewers to share the ad with others, and persuading viewers.”
“The challenge lies in getting the best mix of all four ingredients and baking them into your ad.”
Read the article if you’re planning any kind of video/social media campaign; Teixeira’s insights and explanations will give you a much better shot at that success.
One of the problems is that entrepreneurs are so enamored with their products that they want to tell the world about it, so the world will love it, too.
But in a time of instant information availability and short attention spans, the world doesn’t care much about your product—it wants first and foremost to be entertained.
The research shows that if sharing an ad will somehow benefit the sender as much as it helps the advertiser, then the ad might go viral.
Things that tickle your funny-bone or touch your heart are always shared faster and longer than product facts.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
