Blogs

There was a great article in the New York Times last week about what motivates people to share articles with one another. Sociologists have long wondered whether positive or negative news will spread faster through social networks and a team of researchers at Penn’s Wharton School of Business set out to answer this question by analyzing the “most emailed” articles on the New York Times website over a span of 6 months. The study tracked more than 7,500 articles published from August 2008 to February 2009 and found that the answer is neither. According to the study, the NY Times audience generally tends to spread positive news more than negative news, however the most shared type of news by a wide margin was that of “awe”, including articles about scientific breakthroughs and surprising, awe inspiring facts like free range chickens discovered on the streets of New York.

What does this teach us as marketers? Weave a little innovation into your campaign design. Wow and inspire. Embrace your awesomeness and give your audience something to talk about.

Read the Full Article: Will You Be E-Mailing This Column? It’s Awesome >>

For those of you who missed OMMA Social or would like a summary of some of the key social media topics and tips, I encourage you to check out my colleague Kristin Hersant's prolific Twitter feed from the event. They are cataloged in the following PDF: /pdf/omma_social_2010_twitter_transcript.pdf

Here are just some of the topics she covered in 140 characters or less.

Brands tackle social in different ways: e.g. PR, branding, direct marketing. What will win? Whatever ties to revenue. #ommasocial 12:43 PM Jan 26th

What's more interesting than amassing 2 million followers is that audience's ability to influence their friends. #ommasocial 12:34 PM Jan 26th

Your app doesn't need 2B rocket science. Think about how to keep your brand in front of them and drive traffic across channels. #ommasocial 12:15 PM Jan 26th