Optimizing Twitter Memes: 5 Success Factors

Whats a meme? Its a viral idea. I love Daniel Dennetts characterization: A meme is an information package with attitude. Check out this visual review of internet memes.

What works in social media to spread memes? Im relatively new to viral marketing- my achievements in this area are small compared to gurus like Matthew Inman, Lyndon Antcliff and Dan Zarrella. Ive made more mistakes than anything, but Ive learned from them. You can benefit from and avoid these mistakes, discussed below.

Im reviewing three recent social media campaigns Ive been involved in spreading via Twitter, and what has and hasnt work about them. In the future Ill going to write another post about the fourth campaign, Human Rights Day.

Success Factors I See Operating:

1. Spontaneous collaborative inspiration
2. Twitter meme seeding
3. Audience resonance
4. Retweeting
5. Publicly visible metrics

Before I get into the details, I want to say, Im not going to talk about a lot of the aspects of viral marketing that are covered better elsewhere, so please check out some of my favorite resources:

• Meme on Wikipedia
• Internet Memes via Google
• Dan Zarrella
• Talks like this: Daniel Dennett on TED

1. Did You See What She Just Tweeted???
New memes are created quickly on Twitter

A discussion I started on Twitter about mom bloggers led to the creation of the acronym MILT (Mom Id Like to Tweet). A bunch of people loved the idea. Within an hour we were talking about creating MILT t-shirts and running a MILT contest (The idea was that if you were in the top 5 MILTs in voting on Dec 31st, youd win a free MILT t-shirt).

We jumped on the Shorty Awards bandwagon to make the contest possible- it turned out that you could create your own categories, and the Shorty guys said theyd consider adding some of the user-generated categories when they review the nominations on January 1st.

The reason this worked is that Twitter can give you a really quick indication of how well your idea resonates with how many people. Within minutes of the creation of the MILT acronym, we had numerous @replies and retweets.

Lesson: throw your half-baked ideas onto Twitter or brainstorm them there publicly " youll get valuable contributions and feedback immediately.

2. Hey, Listen- Were Starting This Thing
Twitter meme seeding requires public and private recruiting

Viral spread is momentum, and momentum cant occur until you overcome inertia. The memes virality itself turns the originator into a vector (agent of contagion) and forces them to spread it. If you have a truly viral meme, it should sustain itself. But for others to spread it, they have to hear about it first. Some amount of promotion is required to get the ball rolling. With the MILT meme, designer @CreativeWisdom and nominated some MILTs and DMd some of our influential Twitter friends about it.

This graph shows the initial promotion, plus sporadic reproduction since then. I wish I had a way to measure virality or figure out what the threshold is- its hard to evaluate at this point how viral MILT is, but considering it did not completely die after the first promotional efforts, it has demonstrated some virality. The Shorty Awards category has continued to fuel MILT tweeting.

Tweetsgiving seeding was similar- I was contacted by Carrie Kerpen of www.TheKBuzz.com. She was helping Epic Change by recruiting influential twitterers- and I contacted about seven other Twinfluentials including Jessica Smith, Sarah Evans and Chris Brogan. Several people contacted Chris, and he was one of the first people to tweet about Tweetsgiving. That was a big win for the effort, since hes one of the five Twitterers with the greatest reach. Over the next 48 hours a number of other influentials became aware of the campaign and tweeted about it. More details about that campaign are below.

Lesson: Tell your network publicly and privately about your meme. Front-load your communication efforts to jumpstart its spread. Recruit people in your network who can recruit other influentials in their networks.

3. I Love/Hate/Dont Care About That Thing
Audience Resonance is Critical

After Pubcon 2008, I learned from a pink pony that the Sphinn community was tired of funny personal blog posts if they didnt include some useful tips as well. I was the unlucky one to galvanize that community sentiment.

Tweetsgiving was very successful not just because of its timing and theming with the Thanksgiving holiday) but also because there are a lot of generous people on Twitter. The goal was to raise $10,000 in 48 hours to build a schoolhouse for children in Tanzania. They had $1500 in donations within a couple hours. In the end, they exceeded their goal by 11%.

We cant assume this kind of generosity will continue on Twitter, because too many such efforts eventually might wear the givers out. And that means that luck, or serendipity, is definitely a factor in social media campaign success. In fact, some linkbait-producing social media programs are year-long efforts that push one linkbait post per month, planning on possibly only two or three of them getting a big response. These program designs acknowledge the unpredictability of viral efforts.

The MILT meme did not work the way I expected:

• Some stay at home moms, who are offended by MILF, assumed MILT was also offensive. Only a portion of SAHMs are fans of the MILT concept.
• These moms dont want to promote each other as much as I expected. I envisioned them saying I tweet with these moms- these are moms Id like to tweet with- Ill vote for them. That has happened, but less so and from fewer moms than I expected. I was told privately that a number of mom bloggers are tired of these popularity contests. Again, what works now may not work indefinitely.
• I was also told that guys might be more likely to nominate MILTs. Even my target vectors were questionable for this meme.

Lessons: It pays to see what your audience responds to, but you cant bank on them responding the same way in the future. Try to predict accurately how your target vectors will respond to the meme. Panel them privately ahead of time- dont assume.

4. Look What So and So Just Said!!!
Retweeting is how Twitter memes spread

Dan Zarrella just wrote a great post about retweeting based on loads of data. I wrote one not long ago about what seems to make people more likely to retweet you.

The way it goes is:

• Someone Tweets
• Someone Likes That Tweet
• They Retweet That Tweet

The positive effects of that third step are social proof, validation, and increased authority for the original twitterer.

Lesson: Ensure that your tweets, or the format for your meme tweets and retweets themselves contain viral properties.

5. Wow, These Numbers Show Were Having a Real Effect Here!!!
Visible metrics accelerate participation and meme spread

Some factors in the MILT memes initial spread are:

• Visible metrics of the Shorty Awards,
• Competitive nature of contest
• Reward of the MILT t-shirt for winners, etc.

You could argue that a truly strong meme wouldnt need that assistance, and I might agree- but Im not going to worry about that discussion for now.

In my 5 steps of optimization, one of the critical factors in achieving goals is being able to measure your progress with a key metric. Part of this is simply the need to quantify progress and direction so we can steer our own ships, but there is also an emotional component. We get excited when we see were reaching our goals. In the case of the MILT contest, anyone who wanted to be in the top 5 has bought in, and made winning their goal. Some want to win outright, others just want the T-shirt.

Tweetsgiving used a donation-meter from ChipIn.com to show progress toward their goal. They did well even though the $1500 donated in the first few hours didnt show up for about an hour. The social momentum on Twitter sustained it despite the delay. Stacey Monk of Epic Change and Avi Kaplan blogged about why they thought their campaign succeed- one factor was the Top Turkey designation, which might have been ego, or might have been just knowing you were donating the maximum amount- so Tweetsgiving not only had a way for people to see overall progress, but also a way to distinguish themselves. A quick buy into visibility for a good cause.

Lesson: Show the quantified effects of contributors efforts and they will contribute more.

Summary

I hate wrapping up a blog post as if some mean teacher is going to grade me down for lack of a good conclusion, but I know Ive only brought a bit of light to a complicated field. So in conclusion, I wish you Happy Holidays, a Joyous New Year, and Viral Serendipity.

And please tweet to your friends about this blog post. LOL 🙂

No, seriously. Do it.