So where do you place an idea so it spreads through networks?
There’s some network research from MIT that trumps the notion of the influencer: 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 weakest links (the people we never think of) have higher spreading power than the strongest links 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.
The fringe is much more friendly
New ideas and trends come from the fringe, 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:
- Go outside the mainstream where things are changing and look for ideas there.
- Do algorithmic innovation: 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.
- Your idea needs to be buzzworthy. Ask yourself: Would anyone tell a friend about this?
- Feed it to the fringe.
- Make the influencers come to you.
What do you think, what’s your experience with making ideas spread?
Collapse theory graphic by BlackCoffee
