Most Important Concepts:

• Build social currency by making your product remarkable, integrating game mechanics, and making people feel like insiders.
• Link your product to triggers that happen often in your target demographics lives, to get more ongoing word of mouth.
• Physiological arousal is the key. High-arousal emotions lead people to share.
• People can imitate only when they can see what others are doing. Make it public.

How I Can Use This Information:

Chapter Recap:

Introduction: Why things catch on:

• The six principles of contagiousness:
  • Social currency
  • Triggered
  • Emotional
  • Public
  • Practically valuable
  • Stories

1 - Social currency:

• More than 40% of what people talk about is their personal experiences or personal relationships.
• Choices signal identity, which is why we all make similar inferences from some characteristics.
• Remarkable products are talked about twice as often as more ordinary products.
• Game mechanics help generate social currency because doing well makes us look good. People love boasting about things they’ve accomplished.
• Leveraging game mechanics is easier if there is a tangible, visible symbol that she can display to others.
• Scarcity and exclusivity boost word of mouth by making people feel like insiders.

2 - Triggers

• Interesting products get more immediate word of mouth, but to get ongoing word of mouth something needs to trigger the person to remember to talk about it.
• Link your product to triggers that happen often in your target demographics lives.

3 - Emotion