Viral

What It Takes For Ideas To Spread

Garth Beyer

Ideas That Spread

As I’m ironing out speech ideas and book ideas, I’m ruminating on the difficulty of introducing an idea that spreads.

We no longer need a book or a speech or a consultation to tell us how to solve a problem we have. Google and YouTube is there for that. If you’re searching for a “How to,” the Internet is your friend.

But the “Why do” …that might be worthy of print media or a Ted talk or a podcast.

Instead of producing something that shares a solution to someone’s problem, we have the opportunity to share something we are passionate about with someone who might not know they had a problem with their “why,” which, may in turn alter the “how to” they seek.

Our goal, then, ought to be to find those who don’t know they need help and proceed to inspire them with an idea worth spreading.

For a spreadable idea, you few things must fall into place:

1) You must be passionate about an idea that is, at minimum, different from what has been done before. The cue here is often the saying, “We’re doing things just a bit different.” For an idea to spread, there must be both a sense of security (doing things that we know already works) and a little adventure (but doing them a bit differently).

2) The audience must understand the basics of your idea, which you typically don’t need to go in depth about. Recall, Google has you covered as well as bookstores when it comes to the basics. Ideas that spread aren’t sent out to beginners, they are given as a gift to those who 1) understand the foundation of your idea already and 2) trust you. Which leads us to the third and final variable.

3) Ideas spread as quickly as the path established for them allows; that is, the relationship you have, the connection you have built determines the speed at which an idea can spread. The stronger the relationship, the easier it is for an idea to go viral. This goes further than just making a connection between you and someone in your target audience; it requires you to connect your target audience to each other, ultimately creating multiple pathways for the idea to spread.

Lastly, ideas don’t spread simply by throwing them out there. Ideas spread when they are remarkable, as in, worth making remarks about, worth talking to others about, worth sharing.

For an idea to resonate, the idea must focus on the part of doing or thinking about things differently.

 

Stay Positive & Go Spread Something Remarkable

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Business Development: How To Handle Construction & Improvements

Garth Beyer

When you are doing construction on your business, blog or yourself you need to remember that construction is the biggest event that goes viral with word of mouth.

Do you notice that when there are road construction workers starting, you get notified by someone or you notify someone. Wait…

it’s not just one person who tells you or you tell, its everyone you see. Everyone at work, everyone that you think it may have the slightest effect on.

The same happens with your life and business, when you are under construction, not only can every see it, not only will everyone spread the word, but the worst…they will all detour.

The biggest difference between road construction and business/self construction? After the road is repaired, people go back to driving on it. After you finish your construction, very few will come back. Just like you have to plan when you are going to launch new products, you have to plan your construction periods. There are two times when you need to do construction and there are proper ways to handle both. After following through, you will not only see all your old customers and friends come back, but they will bring back with them other friends and prospects.

1. When you have a mishap that needs to be correct immediately.

You have to beat the word of mouth spreading that there has been a hiccup. Not only that, but the word of mouth you want to be spreading is that you were quick to make the correction and in doing so, used the opportunity to also make an improvement for all to benefit from. You can’t expect no one to notice the small bump in the road and the thing about small bumps is that the more people that notice it, the bigger it gets. It’s much more cost + time efficient to correct and improve the little matters immediately than having them lead to the second type of construction.

2. When it’s time to fix pot holes and make new improvements.

These construction events need to be planned and sometimes, even promoted. But you can’t stop there, on top of promoting the construction, to win the customers over, you have to provide the perfect detour plan for them while offering them rewards for their patience and for breaking their routine. Shame on you for letting it get that bad! Or… rather not. When you hear a business making huge improvements or incorporating a large update, not only do you get excited yourself for the new improvements, but you share that excitement. Of course, if the business follows through with the steps mentioned above, not only will you keep a connection with the business, not only will the people you tell and share the excitement with go and connect with the business but most importantly, with the new update the business will have more than doubled the word of mouth viral effect which promotes itself.

In the end, it does not matter what people read, it does not matter what people write – what does matter is what they say to each other. Are they telling each other to detour your business because you didn’t respond quickly enough to an accident (Customer service)? Or are they complaining to each other about the new update that took place that they didn’t hear about or get an incentive for (anyone still getting mad at all the Facebook updates)?

I mentioned it before and I’ll mention it again, there is no greater cause and effect than announcing, preparing, providing and rewarding people when you go under construction which results with the reverse domino affect; One overly-positive correction and improvement made by the business (you) will make all the other domino’s (people) find their way to you.

Stay Positive and Turn Your “Under Construction” Moments Into Tipping Points

Garth E. Beyer

Reverse Domino Effect