To make an idea spread start at the edge

Published on 03 February 2010 by Jorge in Innovation, Social Media, Strategy, Word of Mouth

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So where do you place an idea so it spreads through networks?

There’s some : the most influential spreaders in a social network do not correspond to the best connected people or to the most central people.

The truth is we don’t really know specifically from where an idea/trend will spread from, we only know that the and these people are found at the edges of a network.

So what’s a marketer/innovator to do?

 

Influencers don’t care about you

There are some theories but the one most everyone focuses on is reaching the influencers made popular by Malcolm Gladwell in his book the Tipping Point. Well good luck with that because most everyone including your competitors is doing the same thing, the race is on to reach the so called influencers and they can barely keep up with all the ideas they’re being asked to spread.

Imagine being the care taker for the President of the United States and you get all sorts of letters from people who want to say something to the President and your job is to filter out the one’s that are most relevant for him to read and take action on. Well that’s exactly the battle you have to fight when targeting the influencers, everybody knows them so why would your idea come first?

People will ONLY ‘spread an idea’ if they think it’s worth remarking about, not because you paid them for their attention.

 

collapse-theory-graphic

 

The fringe is much more friendly

, from the edge and not from the mainstream, and spread from the edge to the center and then the process repeats itself. You stand a better chance of catching that ‘fire starter idea’ by going out to the fringe (where nothing is settled) instead of looking for ideas where everyone is looking (the mainstream) and then focus on making your idea take form with people at the edge.

In conclusion here are a few things to remember to help your ideas spread:

  1. Go outside the mainstream where things are changing and look for ideas there.
  2. Do : generate a lot of ideas, figure out ways to try them out cheaply and quickly, and then scale-up the ones that seem most promising.
  3. Your idea needs to be buzzworthy. Ask yourself: Would anyone tell a friend about this?
  4. Feed it to the fringe.
  5. Make the influencers come to you.

What do you think, what’s your experience with making ideas spread?

Collapse theory graphic by

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  • Starting at the edge reminds me of capillary action. Drop a drop of water in the middle of a paper towel on a counter and the drop stays relatively the same size. Then put the edge of a paper towel into a drop of water sitting on a counter top and watch that drop be sucked up into the paper towel like wild fire. The drop spreads quickly and covers more ground when it encounters the edge.
  • That's a great observation Andy, at the edges there is less friction than at the center. In theory this is easy to see but in practice it's a whole different story.

    Thanks for the comment!
  • deanvl
    very good blog, insightful and a refreshing take on MG's view of what makes brands "tip" I'm going to blog about tweet this. Interesting strapline - The brands of tomorrow today. Check out my company TomorrowToday we are saying similar things lets spread the message. www.tomorrowtoday.uk.com and our blog www.connectioneconomy.com
  • This is pretty much what Moore said when he built his bowling ally concept. You can move from an early adopter to the vertical using a social network map for people one or two degrees from the early adopter. Typical marketing efforts take six months to begin to be effective,hence the Chasm. Social network will let you start selling earlier.

    Sales people will tell you that they have no success selling to prospects three degrees of separation away from the early adopter.

    Another factor to consider with the social network approach is the presence of subcultures that might be partitioning your map. Each subculture would require changes to the underlying model, and would represent a different version of the application. You might want to delay selling to another subculture until you have income from that of the early adopter.
  • I do believe there's some unknown phenomenon happening because it's very hard to know where exactly a tipping point happens, it can start at the edge or the middle or both and then converge. But I guess the 'influencer' strategy is the most obvious and predictable one and so most efforts go in that direction.

    Most innovations and trends usually come out of nowhere, from the fringe, but everything that's incremental is pushed from the center.

    Thanks for the commenting.
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