The awe factor

Bad news sells newspapers. It is the first lesson the young cadets learn once they have mastered which hack has what coffee from ‘only go to that’ cafe.

Journalists soon get used to being told by their readers that they want good news, that they want to be enlightened, moved and inspired and that they are tired of bad news. But they quickly learn – it is bad news that gets the large spikes in readers online and offline.

But is this true of social media? One assumes so. Bad news of a celebrity overdose spreads faster than aggressive cancer through social media networks. But a group of researchers decided to look at what people were sending each other; how they used email to “spread the word”. The results are interesting for anyone in business who is interested in using the power of social media to get their message out but in a non-blatant marketing way.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania did a study of the New York Times list of most emailed articles. For six months they checked every 15 minutes to see what was emailed.

And guess what? The researchers found out that people preferred to email more emotional stories. They emailed on more positive stories than negative ones. And they liked to send long, intellectually challenging pieces that would make the recipient think; for example science articles were sent more often than the researchers expected.

But what really surprised the researchers was the “awe” factor. Information that was awe-inspiring was emailed more often. An awe-inspiring story was defined as a story that forced the reader to look at the world in a different way, involving the broadening of the mind.

It makes sense. We all know when we have those moments, when we feel our minds shift and our emotions engage and we think: “You know what? I hadn’t thought of it like that.” And then we are moved to send the information on to someone else.

And that seems to be the point. It is the emotional connection that an article incites that is driving the reader to send it on. First it has connected with the reader and now they want it to connect with you, thereby vicariously connecting you to them.

Yesterday editor James Thomson wrote in Entrepreneur Watch about the webinar he did with futurist and anthropologist Mike Walsh.

You can download the presentation (including the slides and the audio) here. One point he made was the big challenge for business is to understand that the size of a network is one thing, but it is the influence it has that holds the real key to success. And of course the challenge is finding ways to spot, watch and, most importantly, influence these networks in a way that doesn’t necessarily involve straight marketing.

But the big challenge will be the create the ‘awe-inspiring information” that gets the social networks humming.