Find this guy

Seth Godin has a post up on his blog about viral growth on social networks. His basic point is that providing relevant content to a few people creates the kind of viral activity that over time is far more effective that providing mediocre content to a whole lot of people. Relevancy rules, and you increase relevancy by generating better content.

In order to generate better content though, we need to know who it is we are generating it for. The average Facebook user has around 123 friends which means that you are getting around hundred more views each time somebody shares a piece of your content on Facebook. The initial impulse here is to say “Well, shoot, if I can potentially increase my reach by 100 times, I should broadcast to as many people as possible so that there are more chances for the content to be shared.” Very simply, this is wrong. This idea is based upon the false assumption the odds of somebody electing to share a piece of content are fixed and are the same across all people. This is the old mindset that almost killed the music industry: our customers/fans/ticket-buyers are not individuals, but are all the same nameless, faceless automatons. This is obviously not true. If it were the case that for any piece of content, the odds for a recipient choosing share it socially were fixed at say 1 in 100, then I would tell you to get your content in front of as many people as possible. But that is not the case. The fact is that most people are not willing to share your content, no matter what. So instead of worrying about the masses, why not instead focus on the small handful of individuals that are willing to redistribute your content?

The key then is to identify which fans/subscribers/customers are most likely to respond to your message so positively that they want to spread the word. Go to your Facebook Fan-page… What? you don’t have one? MySpace is fine and all, but really, MySpace users are less engaged than Facebook users and there are far fewer of them. So, like I said, go to your Facebook page and look at you number of fans. Now look at the other areas of your page: the wall, the discussions, anywhere that your fans can interact. Is the number of active posters equal to the total number of fans you have? Not even close. The fact that some of your fans have posted on your wall or contributed to the discussion boards shows that they are willing to speak up and be heard though. These are your target, these are your speakers. So listen to them. Listen to what they want, what they like and dislike. Listen to them and find the clues, and there will be clues, about what you could do that would really make their day. Then do it.

Just like in life, Facebook users vary dramatically even though the uniformity of Facebook pages makes this easy to forget. Also, just like in life, some Facebook users are more outspoken then others. Find your outspoken fans and give them something worthy of being outspoken about. Even if your outspoken fans have only the average number of friends, your message still will gain significant reach beyond just your initial subscriber list. However, I suspect that you will find that the more outspoken Facebook users also have many more friends than the average user. Also, they are probably friends with other outspoken people who may not be on your Fan list (yet), which means that they have access to entire tribes of folks that you don’t even know are out there. This is how viral activity works. Pretty soon, if your content is truly compelling, not only has your actual fan base grown, but your messaging reach has been increased exponentially.

Okay, homework time: Go to your page, explore it, read it, get to know like your fans get to know it. Then come up with one good idea based purely on what your fans express and do it! Then let me know how it goes.