If Virality Is What You Want, Be A Nepotist

March 16th 2020

@mark

Mark Nadal

http://gun.eco Founder

To spread, you want to get people to hear your story.

It is ideal to have your own platform to tell those stories from, but you probably do not already have as big of a fan base there as you would like.

You need to find where people are, and how to get in contact with the ones that are most likely to like you.

Online, we can do that by checking what are the most popular sites by daily or monthly active users.

As of 2020, that seems to be Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Messenger, WeChat, TikTok, Instagram, Tumblr, Reddit, & Twitter - roughly in that order.

You need to then constantly push a version of your story to all those platforms, build up followers on those platforms to so they re-share your story, that then drives them and others towards your platform.

To do this, we will be making Party, a browser extension and mobile app (eventually) that automatically posts to all the other sites whenever you post to any one of the sites. This will be the "Public" Party mode in addition to the Private Party mode that is already available.

Once you have your great content on those platforms, you need to then do individual outreach to as many people you can find that might have overlapping interest.

Start with the most active yet least popular consumers first.

Gain momentum until you can get personally introduced to the most popular of curators. This generates what is known as a signal to noise ratio.

Most already popular people get bombarded with requests, and even though it is unfair, they are more likely to judge you as a spammer or assume you are a bot if you do not already have a follower count of at least 10% of theirs on that platform.

Individually reaching out to active yet least popular consumers is effective is because if they are active, that is where they are already spending their time and attention. If they are spending their time and attention there, they must feel it is a high quality source of being pushed valuable content and connections.

Connections are likely more rare and precious than content to them, and it signals you are in the same in-group or, if you are a celebrity, will make them feel special.

People desire belonging and purpose, so as long as you have stories that are good and ethical for people, it is healthy to recruit them for a cause and make them fans.

Get them to follow you on that platform, but move the conversation when possible to your own platform. This will let them chat with you there, but more important than your ego, is that they will discover other like-minded people and form community with them.

This creates a stickiness factor that makes them active on your platform, rather than just the old one. Now, whether that old platform implodes or not, they will still be notified when you have new stories to share with them.

Repeat this process until you have a big fan base on those other platforms with active users, then start being bold with interacting with people up to 10 times more popular than you. Ideally this connection is through a fan of yours that is also a friend of that person.

More popular people probably already have a purpose or cause they are fighting for that might be prioritized over helping spread your cause.

This is why trying to find curators may be easier, as it is their job to keep people informed, and they are actively looking for the next big thing.

However, this is why they may be more judgmental or critical of things, and why they would have unfairly written you off as a spammer had you not been connected through a mutual friend, or have a proportional amount of "weight" on that platform relative to them.

Sadly, the most important key take away from this is that the world runs off of nepotism. If there is one thing you remember, remember that. So if you want to spread your stories, become nepotistic with everyone.

Maybe then, once we're all nepotistic with each other, we can finally have a meritocracy where the best ideas and stories win - your stories.

Read more at https://gun.eco/docs/Virality

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