Berger also discovered that people were more likely to share articles that evoked anger or anxiety. Why? Because anger and anxiety are high-arousal emotions.

This book is really a study of human behaviour and psychology more than anything else, which is why I found it interesting. I began to look at advertisements and social media from an entirely new perspective. The more I read, the more I felt like I’d walked into an engaging university lecture on the psychology behind marketing. I couldn’t help but analyse my own consumption of media, advertising and various products. The key to being successful for companies is to position this useful information in a way that stands out to consumers.Word-of-mouth is what makes it happen. And word-of-mouth is the reason why social media and advertising will never be efficient in creating movements and gaining sales. The content that we post on social media is marketing. We’re trying to get users to engage with the brand, and our efforts are marketing tactics designed to increase brand awareness, follower count, and shares.

Human minds are hardwired to remember only about 20% of what we see and roughly 65% of what we hear. In terms of virality, this means that the easiest way to get people to remember your product is to find a clever way to incorporate it into a real-world experience. Unsurprisingly, it’s a matter of being contagious. So, what makes a video contagious? Jonah Berger has broken down some factors that make up the core of what makes a video go viral, which I’ll review below in the Contagious book summary. Contagious Book Summary Key Points What effective strategies do you have to develop to promote or sell your products and ideas? What are the potential tips for creating influential content? The following key points will reveal how you can create contagious content by keeping in mind your audience and their requirements. Moreover, the tips below will also help you upgrade your marketing knowledge. If this material is enough to cover an entire Wharton MBA course, then I'm not sure what that says about Wharton's program. There is just not that much information in this book far beyond common sense most people already intuitively know. I had been looking forward to this book release as the topic is interesting and even possesses its own themed six characteristics, conveniently ascribed the acronym STEPPS, which the author Jonah Berger explains contributes to why products or ideas become contagious. Mr. Berger argues that if we want our product or idea to catch on and spread like wildfire, we must try to build into it as many of these six STEPPS as we can. STEPPS stands for:

4. Public

He emphasizes the importance of creating narratives. You should have stories that you can use to explain your product or idea and not just cold, hard facts. Narratives are more interesting than statistics, anyways. Berger calls the concept of looking at what others are doing to resolve our own uncertainty, “social proof.” Individuals imitate actions, because other’s choices provide information that helps them decide how to do something. Berger provides the example, of looking for a restaurant in an unfamiliar city: we look for restaurants that are full of people (because it must be delicious or hip), and we walk by the restaurants that are empty (food too expensive or bland). Jonah Berger knows more about what makes information ‘go viral’ than anyone in the world.” — Daniel Gilbert, Professor of Psychology, Harvard University and author of Stumbling on Happiness

PDF / EPUB File Name: Contagious_Why_Things_Catch_On_-_Jonah_Berger.pdf, Contagious_Why_Things_Catch_On_-_Jonah_Berger.epub Thus, it is important to think about context of the environment of the people you are trying to target: whether seasonal (candy corn and Halloween); geographic (cheesesteaks and Philadelphia). 3. Emotion – “When we care, we share”Contagious was a decent look into the science behind social contagions. The book is my second from the author, after his 2016 book Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior, which I really enjoyed.