I woke up this morning to a fascinating phenomenon that was happening on this blog and in the Twitosphere… one of my blog entries had gone viral literally overnight!
I try to keep an eye on our website conversions, as any concerned online marketer does with the “gauges” of their online business’ engine. Last night I noticed what seemed like a sharp increase in opt-ins for our Launch Report. At first I assumed there might have been a surge in Google Adwords or organic search and just went to sleep…
This morning, I noticed the same upward trends. Upon further investigation, I discovered the true source of this sudden explosion in traffic to my blog (and correspondingly, to our product site).
In a span of 12 hours, an article I posted back in January 2010 on the “Psychology of Storytelling in Product Launches” suddenly took off and went viral, producing an above average number of ReTweets (record RT’s for my blog) and a big surge in traffic. So I decided to go back and try to understand what the heck just happened…
From what I can tell by looking at the original Tweet thread, it started with a single ReTweet by KelsieNguyen, a “Communication and New Media Student at National University of Singapore”, who at the time of this writing has 114 followers. Her RT was storytellin, who has more than 5,000 followers who are interested in storytelling. This appears to be the first viral inflection point…
Then something amazing happened. Four RT’s into the first-generation, emmanuelulloa issued this RT:
emmanuelulloa: RT @guykawasaki Psychology of Social Product Launches –Part 3, Storytelling http://om.ly/?oMLK
Note that this RT began a 2nd-generation viral outbreak. Guy Kawasaki is a well-know social media guru with more than 250,000 followers and the AllTop social media news site. These two posts created a huge flurry of additional RT’s:
alltop: How to use storytelling for a product intro http://om.ly/oKmm
guykawasaki: How to use storytelling for a product intro http://om.ly/oKnT
Guy Kawasaki renamed the thread slightly into the new title you see above “How to use storytelling for a product intro”. This apparently resonated even more, as you can see from the five+ pages of ReTweet’s that have taken place.
At the time of this writing, the RT’s are continuing to pour in!
I am intrigued by how powerful and rapid this process was. Perhaps it happens to other bloggers every day, but it’s not something I’m accustomed to seeing. After several years of investing in my blog, it’s great to see I’ve finally struck a chord and people are excited about incorporating storytelling into their marketing. It definitely works!
Many thanks to all who RT’d that post.
So, why am I posting about this now? Well, it seems like an opportunity for an interesting case study on what causes a blog post and Tweet to suddenly go viral. I mean, the original blog post took place in January, and last night it suddenly went viral … this definitely tweaks my curiosity 
I’m going to analyze this more (once it completes, as it’s still apparently in-progress) and do a “post-mortem” to understand the dynamics involved better. On the surface it appears the ingredients might be:
1. Relevant, quality content on the blog
2. A audience who is passionate enough about a topic (e.g., storytelling) to ReTweet it to their “influencers”
3. A major “gateway” influencer, such as Guy Kawasaki, taking note of it and elevating the RT to a much broader audience
4. Striking a chord with the audience by delivering value they (apparently) feel warrants being shared further.
Interesting how the marketplace grabs and idea and just runs with it – on its own merits and on its own timetable…
Tags: storytelling, storytelling in marketing, twitter research formulaRelated posts:
{ 2 comments }
Here’s what happened. I am writing a book called Enchantment. One of my beta readers, Taly Weiss http://www.trendsspotting.com/blog/?page_id=2, pointed me to your article. I liked it so I tweeted it to my followers and the rest is history.
So really you have Taly Weiss to thank.
Awesome. Thank you Guy. Glad you liked the post.
And please pass my thanks along to Taly Weiss.
Please let me know when you’re book becomes available so I can check it out and pass it along to our audience.
And thanks again for the RT!
Rick
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