Content Marketing and The Tipping Point

Image source: Amazon.

Last weekend I was organizing my bookshelf and found a book I read some time ago. Because I enjoyed reading it so much, I made a cup of coffee and sat down for a couple of hours to browse through the book. The title of the book is “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference,” by Malcom Gladwell.

In the book, Gladwell describes the tipping point as a magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold and spreads like wildfire. Just like a single person can start an epidemic, a small but precise push can cause a trend or a product to become the next big thing.

Reaching a Tipping Point

But, how does this happen? Can tipping points be planned?

Gladwell proposes that three factors contribute significantly to the creation of social epidemics and reaching a tipping point:

1. The Law of the Few: social epidemics are created by a small group of people with strong connections.
2. The Stickiness Factor: the product, idea, or trend needs to be memorable to spread quickly and effectively.
3. The Power of Context: small changes in the environment can make a big difference in how people act.

While the three factors are important for a product or service to reach a tipping point it’s “The Law of the Few” that gets my attention, especially in the context of content marketing.

A Few Can Lead to Many

Photo source: Bernard Goldbach on flickr.

The book proposes that a small group of influential people play a large role in creating social epidemics, and the group includes what he calls Connectors, Mavens, and Salespeople. Connectors are defined as the people with a large number of social connections, people who can bring people together. Mavens are experts, the people we trust about specific topics. And Salespeople are people who can persuade others when in doubt.

While these people may not be end customers, they can all help ignite a cause, whether it’s introducing a new product, enrolling others into a program, or getting the word out about a specific situation.

Content Marketing and the Law of the Few

Let’s consider how you can apply “The Tipping Point” to your content marketing. 

First, identifying your target audience is a key component of your strategy; you need to know whom you’re creating content for. That way, your message will be more effective. Most articles speak about the different personas involved during the purchase process and the sales cycle. In short, most organizations are trying to “infect” the potential buyer directly.

The “Law of the Few” tells us that there is a small group of people who hold the key to influencing the entire group. It’s good to identify the personas involved during the purchase process but you could get better results by identifying your Connectors, Mavens, and Salespeople.

Influencer Marketing

This is called influencer marketing.

Image source: Sean MacEntee on flickr.

Influencer marketing and content marketing go well together, like peanut butter and jelly. They’re both good on their own but they’re even better when you put them together. If you want to supercharge your content marketing efforts, you can turn to the influencers. They can give credibility to a piece of content, and at the same time that they can amplify your reach and awareness.

If you want to get into influencer marketing, you first need to identify your key influencers and engage them in conversations with the goal of getting them on board to co-create and share content. But to make it really work, you need to create a content marketing plan that will build influencer relationships. You can nurture influencers just like you nurture leads.

In the buyers journey there are typically three stages: the awareness stage, the consideration stage, and the decision stage. And you can use the same idea to understand your influencers and their journey. Let’s see what this could look like:

Awareness

This is the starting point. You first need to make the influencer aware of who you are and what problems your products or services solve. Getting influencers’ attention can require some effort but there are a few things you can try, like:

• Follow them on Twitter and other social networks
• Reach out to them through a social channel or comment on their blog
• Share their content and opinions

Interest

This is where your relationship starts to shape up. Your influencer is aware of you and understands your organization, and you can build interest by discussing potential win-win situations, like:

• Share stories
• Ask them for feedback before important presentations or before publishing a piece of content
• Share thoughts about topics in common
• Look for common ground, things that you both like (or dislike). Even if they’re not completely related to the content you want to create, this helps you generate trust

Decision

This is all about delivering mutual value. Some of the tactics you can use in this stage include the following:

• Having them as speakers at your company’s events and conferences
• Invite them to participate in your webinars
• Co-create content in the form of eBooks, whitepapers, blogs, or videos
• Share each other’s content with a comment that supports each other ideas

Next Steps

This is a simple framework for you to try to create a social epidemic by implementing the “Law of the Few” principle from Gladwell's book. Work with your influencers and with some luck you will infect them with your message and they’ll take care of spreading it to the rest of your market.

Use the Comments section below to share your experience in applying related principles to your content marketing. Thanks!