What type of social network influences behaviour?

Yesterday we looked at the motivations for why people engage in different social venues; this morning I came across an interesting new study looking at what type of social network best influences behaviour.

Because it’s all very well if a network spreads information like wildfire, but if that information doesn’t prompt users to do something – buy the product, sign up for the event, stop smoking, change the way they talk about the brand – it’s all so much worthless WOM.

Didn’t I hear something about this? via Lab2112@Flickr

The study, from MIT assistant professor of system dynamics and economic sociology Damon Centola, looked at the spread of health-related behaviour in two different types of social networks – one based around ‘long ties’, or many distant connections, and one based on denser clusters of more closely connected people.

Sociologists have traditionally believed that long ties are the key to the rapid and broad spread of word of mouth, an insight reinforced by a Guardian study presented at a WOMMA UK briefing last year. However, Centola found that to change behaviour, you’re much better off focusing on clustered networks.

It makes human common sense. It’s easy for us to quickly pass on a piece of content via a loosely connected contact; but to understand something more complex, or change ingrained behaviour, we’ll need exposure more than once, and from trusted and emotionally impactful sources. There is more work to be done, but as Centola says,

“For about 35 years, wisdom in the social sciences has been that the more long ties there are in a network, the faster a thing will spread. It’s startling to see that this is not always the case.”

The study is intended to help improve the design of effective health networks, but it has obvious implications for marketing. We’ve always emphasised the need for multiple entry points with a word of mouth campaign, in order to foster both deep and broad engagement. This ensures rapid visibility but also concrete behaviour change, leading to sales, subscriptions and changing attitudes.

This kind of insight is invaluable in tailoring engagement, according to both the brand’s priority and the nature of the community. Great stuff.

Molly Flatt

Women hold the purse strings – talk with them!

Women hold the family online shopping purse strings, so no matter what your product, you should be talking to women. Women are the ones using social media to build their relationships, and in this era of Relationship Commerce, those relationships are pure gold.

It’s the women who will take the time to ask for and give product recommendations. It’s the women who will tap into their networks to find the good deals. It’s the women who will gladly make sure all their friends hear about a wonderful new product they discovered… or a terrible product they would never buy again.

However, these relationships are meaningless for you and your brand if you don’t have ways for these women to easily talk with you. They want to know they can trust you, and how do they figure that out? They build a relationship with you, the “influencer” (seller) just like they do with their friends and other trusted information sources. You absolutely must make sure that women find it easy to talk to you and about you!

  1. Make sure social media tools and your own online communities are as easily accessible as your online product information. This shows that you are not afraid to have your customers / clients talk with each other, so you must not have anything to hide.
  2. Interact publicly with individuals of your audience. You know that the most successful relationships are two-way streets, so keep that in mind as you interact with your “audience.” Social media allows you to build very visible relationships (2000 Twitter followers? 2000 possible observers of any of your interactions) so every single interaction counts. An information push won’t get you anywhere – you have to ask questions and answer them! Then ask follow-up questions and answer those also. Follow me on twitter (@TedRubin) to see what I mean.
  3. Communicate consistently. Don’t expect to build trust if you are only responsive to your audience every now and then. Build social media response time into every day and your consistency will pay off. Only pay attention once in a while, and you have no chance to build a relationship. In other words, just like you can’t disappear in non-digital life and expect to keep your relationships in tact, you can’t just disappear online.

So take another look at your product and your brand offering. Are you talking with the women? You should be. You need to be. If you’re not, start making changes TODAY – your brand success depends on it.

Ted Rubin