The Tipping Point: That magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.Why do some ideas go viral, and not others? Gladwell attempts to answer this with his ideas depicted in the book.
What is The Tipping Point?
Why do some books become bestsellers but others dont. Why did it become cool for teenagers to smoke and most importantly why does one idea go viral and not others. Gladwell attempts to answer this with an idea he calls the “Tipping Point”- that magic moment when an idea becomes trend or social behavior crosses a threshold tips and spreads like wildfire. The idea can be broken down into three principles. They are the law of the Few, the stickiness factor and the power of context. Let’s take a look at this and see how they contribute to making things go viral.
LESSON 1:
The Law of the Few (Connectors, Mavens, and Salespeople).
Gladwell identifies three types of people who seem to help epidemics grow quickly. They are connectors mavens and salespeople. Let’s talk about Connectors. First connectors are those people who seem to know everyone. Everyone knows someone like this. They have more social connections than most people and are great at making friends. Maven’s are the other people that seem to know everything and always want to help. They are like that guy who was eager to show you how to make the perfect golf swing or the lady who is excited to show you which skincare products are best. Why they enjoy helping you out simply because they love what they do. Lastly we have sales people. Why else would you end up with that high that you never use all those computer gadgets. These people know how to sell and they love what they do. They let their actions do the talking and they utilize the power of body language. Malkhaz Geldiashvili better known as “fightmediocrity” popularized animated video reviews for self-development books. He went from 0 to 200 thousand YouTube subscribers in just over a year and has videos with hundreds of thousands of views based on Gladwell’s work. We can confidently presume that connectors, mavens and sales people made a significant contribution to the growth of his channel. After watching some of his animated book reviews connectors may have made a Facebook post about it and showed their friends if those friends love the videos. Then they most likely subscribed even better would be if the friends were connecting themselves which would help the channel grow significantly faster than. If the friends were neither connectors, mavens or salespeople then mavens likely played a role too they may have been the passion of bookworms or the people that want to read books but don’t have the time after seeing one of fight mediocrities videos they may have excitedly shown their friends and that they too can save a ton of time by watching five-minute book summaries instead of reading for 10 hours. How about sales people for those people who were resistant to watch fight mediocrities videos they needed to be persuaded using Gladwell’s definition of a salesperson. I don’t believe they played as big of a role as connectors or mavens. Although fight mediocrity has used some subtle sales techniques to persuade people to watch his videos for example his video review of the book Rich Dad Poor Dad has the words of how to get rich in front of it. This tells a potential viewer exactly what they can get from watching the video and if you know anything about SEO. It helps rank the video higher in the YouTube Search Engine. Meaning more exposure to more people so to spread your message idea brand or product then connectors, mavens and sales people. May be of value to you.
LESSON 2:
The Stickiness Factor.
The lesson of stickiness is the same as above. There is a simple way to package information that under the right circumstances can make it irresistible. All you have to do is to find it like that song that sticks in your head or that thing a person has said that doesn’t leave your mind. Gladwell talks about Sesame Street and how they increase children’s attention rates by placing words behind the Muppets rather than next to them. Content did not change just the placement has changed. It’s not always the major changes in how we present things that matter but the small ones, minor changes can produce massive results. What makes something sticky is different for everything and will always be a mess so what can we do. Although Gladwell doesn’t hand us the answer on a silver platter. But I believe the answer is to experiment as I know of someone in the e-book publishing community that sells books on Amazon by constantly tweaking minor details. He found that changing the price from $4.99 to 498 consistently produced higher sales. Sure there’s a chance this could be linked to the single cause of fallacy but the point is to keep making minor changes into a change that causes your idea or product to stick around.
LESSON 3:
The Power of Context.
Our environment affects our actions. Gladwell cites research that argues that if there are broken windows in a neighborhood then there will be a higher violent crime rate. People will walk by and conclude that no one is in charge, soon more windows will be broken and the sense of anarchy and carelessness will spread from the building to the whole street. According to the power of context if you want the crime rate to go down then fix the windows instead of arresting people for murder. This is better known as the broken window theory which applies to everything. If you want to be an entrepreneur, for example then hang around other entrepreneurs. If you want to clear your head of distractions then claim your bedroom and eliminate everything in your environment that could be distracting. If you want to be a great painter then put up paintings in your home and hang around artists that are more experienced than you.
“Truly successful decision making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking.”
—–>Malcolm Gladwell
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Also published on Medium.
