The Hall of Awesomeness

In my previous post on Hits and Misses, I talked about Pipe Size. In this post I plan on talking about ‘engagement’ and why things become popular.

Engagement

The level of excitement we feel for something and the degree of participation that it causes us due to that excitement, is what I like to call engagement.   Engagement is not purely participation, that connotes mere activity; engagement is more an emotional and social response to things that excite us because it provokes activity.  When you watch the news for example there will be a story on it at some point that grips you.  It will grab a hold of you and shake you in some way.  For me, it’s stories on the housing market.  Stories such as how there will be another boom.  It causes me to swear, rise up out of my seat, and wave two fingers at the presenter.  It engages me and causes me to engage.  The biggest reason things fail is lack of engagement.

Examples of lack of engagement

Whether it be the failing of a university program (INFORMATION SYSTEMS) or the decline in interest in television shows, the ultimate failure of any mass produced vehicle is the result of declining engagement.  Great, you say, that’s wonderful… I already knew that.   Ok smart ass, what then is the primary reason why people stop engaging?  Interest?  Probably, I believe it’s because the program in question no longer creates ‘engagement’ space for participants.   This means creating new opportunities for conversations and new examples of how to create those conversations.  A key example of this can be found in the recent movie, ‘Tenacious D: Pick of Destiny.’

The movie itself is largely for fans, herein lies the problem.  The fan base for Tenacious D probably couldn’t generate 40 million dollars worth of movie dollars. Why?  Well the movie didn’t create the engagement space for people who weren’t fans.  Watching it, I loved it because I am a fan, and I could relate to at least 60% of all the jokes on screen.  I had seen it before, I had heard the riffs that are used as cues in important parts of the movie and I was aware of the history.  If my wife watched that she would have no engagement space there because she has no idea about Tenacious D or their history.  In all honesty, Tenacious D probably should have made the movie more accessible to non-fans.   Then again, maybe they still wouldn’t have engaged because they didn’t know who they were anyway?  On the other hand maybe they can’t grow their fan base?

Another example of how to maintain an engagement or to put it simply: keep people talking, can be found in the on-going popularity of Lost.  At each turn they introduced something new, exciting and interesting, that create the engagement space for on-going conversations.  There was a point at which it did seem like Lost was, ‘everything happens for a season.’  But now, the bigger picture is being unveiled and it’s creating conversations.  This doesn’t just apply to movies either, can you do something where you work to create conversations?

Why Things Become Popular

Ok, so I don’t have a social psychology background or enough of an idea to explain why things become super popular.  Here’s what I know, for me it comes down to a few key things.

1. Creating Engagement Space (or creating conversations)

All of human kind communicate.  They share information with each other and have done for centuries.  In order to facilitate the popularity of something you need to have something that people will talk about.  This is why excellent service increases business overtime and why programs fail … it works both ways.  The concept of leverage provides a useful metaphor here.  If you have something that people want, you have leverage and provided you find a way they can talk about it, they will.  This works in the negative and the positive.  For instance, if you have a degree program that is failing the first thing to do is to find out why.  How do you find that out?  By talking at length to participants.  My first instinct is: why aren’t you spreading the word about how great we are?

Sure you might be tempted to make a whole lot of people redundant, transfer load or worst do nothing.  Find out why people aren’t talking positively about your stuff and boom I guarantee you will turn things around… if you catch it in time. Negative leverage is as easy to create as positive leverage… especially in a social network where trust, sharing and conversation abound.

2. Facilitating the conversation

You can’t control what people say but you can control what you do in order to help them say what they say.  Here’s an example: I went to sea-world last year and I wanted a coffee.  What I got was hot watery milk.  I went to Borders the other day and asked for a book (Outliers) and I already had $200 worth of books in my arms.  The lady told me it was out the back and promptly returned to doing something else.  See?  Now I have told you because Borders made it easy for me to facilitate a negative conversation.  Sure, I could just suck it up but I was amazed that they didn’t want another sale… I left after that because I didn’t want to spend any more of my faculties money!  They didn’t want me to spend my money.

3. Making the transition from conversation to action easy

William James said that the truth was something that happens to an idea.  It’s the active part.  When we go from talking about something to using it, if we find it difficult and hard to manage.  When I was in business last time this was the single flaw that stood out more than others.  What I was trying to sell wasn’t easy to use.  I could start conversations but they would always end in a bad experience for the customer.  It isn’t enough to create conversations, you have to make it easy for people to access and use what you are talking about.  Make it hard and the engagement fails and people will begin talking about alternatives.

4. Maintaining the conversation

Once we have access to the material, keep us there.  You know amazon made a fortune of it’s recommendation engine?  It nearly went broke until it realised (or they realised) that selling things to existing customers helps your bottom line.  Maintenance… simple maintenance!  Things become popular and stay there because we ‘maintain’ the conversation.  Stop doing that, yes you who don’t answer your email or respond to customer queries online… YOU, and people will talk about something else.  Keep the flow of customer interaction going.  Don’t believe me?  Go to twitter search and look for a product.  You’ll see why Dell made 3 million dollars off twitter.

5. Creating new spaces for engagement and innovating conversations

In closing this second part it’s important to look for ways to create new conversations and use those to develop innovation.  Things maintain popularity because they keep us talking and constantly create new ways for us to do so.  Without discourse and then action you have nothing.  New conversations must continue the old ones and add something interesting to the existing one.  The Lost people do this by keeping us guessing.  Others are much better at this and do it by testing the boundaries of the audience.

In the final part of my epic blog trilogy I want to talk about the ‘cutthroat island’ problem and some things that are conversation worthy don’t become popular.

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