Comments on: Leverage The Power of Scarcity for Social & Viral Marketing

By: Why Jokes Go Viral | Dan Zarrella

Why Jokes Go Viral | Dan Zarrella — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 18:32:08 +0000

[...] lived in constant fear of being the last to know some vital piece of information, and it is scarcity that makes knowledge valuable and contagious; you’re not doing your tribal duty if you [...]

By: jcrn

jcrn — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:49:47 +0000

I agree that scarcity is a concept worth using to help maximize contacts and network,etc. I also agree with Bertril, who asks “who do I know that doesn’t know this and would like to learn it from me?” That can help a great deal when contacting people about follow-up stories or additional info and get them to read or subscribe to one’s material.

It can also draw in advertisers who connect with your content, if you write for sites with heavy ad revenue, etc.

By: Dan Zarrella

Dan Zarrella — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:24:42 +0000

@bertil I agree, that scarcity in most situations is defined on the individual level.

That can be hard to measure and certainly in my “breaking news” example the information would be scarce on both a macro and the micro levels.

By: Bertil Hatt

Bertil Hatt — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:19:04 +0000

More then scarcity —that is difficult to measure, short of a product definition (which information lacks) and a exchange institution (that you are trying to set up)— I’d recommend you consider giving information only to people who have someone to share it with.

Viral marketing has made marketers focus on the circle of social ties, instead of the usual built attention pipes. Scarcity makes sense if you consider all the information source and their audience, but why care about how the information is spread in the population when you take an individual’s point of view? From there, the only scarcity is: who do I know that doesn’t know this and would like to learn it from me?

The benefit of social marketing is offering a new angle to people’s attention: some news are acceptable, interesting only if you share them — what’s the point in knowing this is cool if you are the only one to believe it is? This drives in a new problem: what makes an information acceptable to share? So far, being fun and dorky has proven rather universal, but you need to focus on that level — where scarcity is not defined by anything else then isolated “Have you heard that. . . ?”