One of the things we have learned in designing programs to inspire word of mouth is there is a difference between how weak ties or strong ties move us. The classic concept of weak ties is captured in Mark Granovetter's paper, The Strength of Weak Ties. People I have spent more time with, have a level of emotional intensity and intimacy with and some reciprocal activity will qualify as strong ties. Think about your 5000 Twitter followers or 500+ Facebook friends and you quickly recognize that most of those qualify as weak ties.
Weak ties are not as helpful in driving behavior change. They are pretty good at introducing us to new ideas. In fact they are probably better at turning us on to new things that we might not discover by sticking with our regular crowd of close ties.
Mombo.com delivers movie rankings based upon Tweets. They sift through overall Twitter traffic for mentions of Tron, rank sentiment and score movies based upon the volume and sentiment. Signing in then allows me to see movie mentions from followers and a view called "Recommendations for You." I don't care what a Twitter follower of mine says, I am not going to see HP7. I doubt I will ever select a movie to see this way.
Strong at weak ties
Twitter is about weak ties - which is great. I can actually discover a lot from the tweets and links of folks I follow. But Hollywood has multi-million dollar marketing budgets, and I hardly need to follow Twitter to discover a new movie. New foreign film or a gem from the Criterion Collection perhaps.
The movie reviews won't help me decide which film to go to. I need strong ties or review sources that I have learned I have some affinity for (Rotten Tomatoes and Roger Ebert are good sources - Ebert I often agree with; RT favors movie enthusiasts and is always worth a quick qualitative scan). No matter how good Mombo makes its service, it will never rise above premiere-night relevance (getting a whiff of whether Tron is a stinker or not). I suppose if it reported out on a Twitter-list I maintain of strong tie movie-philes, it could start to bridge over to stronger relevance.
Think about how strong and weak ties work and how different platforms may support either as you develop social media marketing programs. The science of influence and persuasion is key to using social media effectively.
I chip in...
maybe, because of the name (weak) they should not been taken for less useful. I think that weak ties can:
a) help recalling a movie trailer in my facebook news feed. surely I've been exposed by all the advertisment before, but we cannot remember each ad/trailer.
b) feeding content to strong ties, unless strong ties just connect with strong ties.
c) weak ties can be average ties... weak for someone and strong for someone else. just to say that mapping them wouldn't be a straight and easy job.
so, the social media program should be structured for both of them, I think
D.
Posted by: Denis | January 31, 2011 at 11:58 AM
John, very interesting. I think the same holds true regarding "offline" weak ties: they are more effective in increasing awareness than prompting meaningful behavior change. The secret sauce lies in converting weak ties to strong ones, creating champions that are truly engaged and invested. That requires tapping into and/or creating personal relevance. But I agree with Denis -- there is a role for both, because without awareness, it's impossible to persuade.
Posted by: Jennifer Wayman | February 02, 2011 at 10:58 PM