Page 46 - The Content Code: Six essential strategies to ignite your content, your marketing, and your business - PDFDrive.com

sustainability, a story far bigger than mere burritos and tacos. They broke a
pattern of what people expected from fast food.

Marketing strategy expert Jason Falls contends that creating conversational
content means invoking a “holy smokes” reaction. “Does your content make
people say ‘Holy smokes’ because this content is so unbelievably:
incredible/sad/ awesome/beautiful/intelligent/informative or some other
declarative response? If that’s the case, they probably need to share that content
with their friends.”

2. Help people achieve something with your content.
A second point in the Berger research on social currency explains why status
translates into social transmission:

“Just like many other animals, people care about hierarchy. Apes engage in
status displays and dogs try to figure out who is the alpha. Humans are no
different. We like feeling that we’re high status, top dog, or leader of the pack.
But status is inherently relational. Being the leader of the pack requires a pack,
and doing better than others.”

He suggests that building game mechanics into your content strategy might
push people into transmission mode. Examples of content activities that bestow
accomplishment include:

Achieving a status level
Winning an award
Being included on a “best of” list
Getting a high score on a quiz
Being favorably mentioned in a video, podcast, or post

Achieving status helps generate social currency and social sharing. After all,
what good is accomplishing something if you can’t tell people about it?

Word of mouth also can come from the voting process itself. Deciding the
winner by popular vote encourages contestants to drum up support. But in telling
people to vote for them, contestants also spread awareness about the product
sponsoring the contest. Instead of marketing yourself directly, you use the
contest to get people who want to win to do the marketing themselves.

One of the most interesting competitions I’ve seen is the “Top Social Media
Blog Contest” compiled by Social Media Examiner, one of the top sites on the
marketing scene. The unique aspect of this blog is that it routinely highlights
competitor blogs.

Michael Stelzner, the company founder, explained that the unusual contest