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Welcome to the Viral Marketing Glossary. Here you'll find definitions for some terms common (and not-so-common) to various types of viral marketing, including social media, buzz, and word-of-mouth. To suggest a term or an edit to a definition, email me.
1. Assimilation
Once a person has been exposed to an idea virus, if they internalize and retain the idea we say that they have assimilated the meme. Typically this process comes with an amount of recreation by which the individual attempts to fit the idea into their existing mental frameworks.
2. Astroturfing
A for-profit effort in politics or advertising that seeks to create the impression of being spontaneous "grassroots" behavior. People typically label things astroturf when they are deceptive attempts to represent average users.
3. Asynchronous Communication
Messages that are independent of time and place, like email, where sender and receiver can communicate across geographic and temporal differences.
4. Blogger Outreach
A form of web based public relations, this is the process by which a list of influential bloggers is identified and the marketer then attempts to build a relationship with them, in the hopes that they will post about whatever the marketer is trying to make "go viral."
5. Buzz
A general term that describes the level of person-to-person interest and activity surrounding a piece of content. When something goes viral, it can be said to have generated buzz.
6. Communal Recreation
Originating in the study of folklore, communal recreation is the process by which an idea is passed on from person to person in what amounts to a giant game of telephone with each person changing the story a little bit as they passed it on. Each person in this re-creative chain attempts to fit the story into their existing mental frameworks and in doing so they apply a bit of themselves, of their own values and perspectives, altering the story and retelling their version.
7. Connector
Connectors are people in a community who know large numbers of people and who are in the habit of making introductions. A connector is essentially the social equivalent of a computer network hub.
8. Copying Fidelity
In order for a virus or meme to successfully replicate, it must be capable of creating copies of itself that are similar to the original, thereby retaining those aspects that made it "go viral" in the first place. Most web technologies allow for very high copying fidelity because a user can simply forward an email, send a URL or copy-and-paste content.
9. Crowdsourcing
When creative efforts are given to a community of users to develop. Open source projects (where there are many developers working together on a project) are an example of crowdsourcing.
10. Digg Effect
When a piece of content pops on a social news site it is exposed to a large audience in a short amount of time. Some smaller and less powerful servers are unable to handle the load and will slow down or crash.
11. Echo Chamber
An echo chamber is a tight social network that tends to agree on certain issues and has conversations amongst itself. The term comes from the amplification effect that people will similar view points create when communicating in social media.
12. Exposure
When an individual reads, hears or watches a piece of viral content, the are considered to have been exposed to the meme or viral idea present.
13. Fecundity
Similar to reproduction rate, fecundity is a measure of the number of new individuals a single instance of a memetic infection will transmit the idea virus to.
14. Go Viral
A piece of content or an idea is said to "go viral" when users who are exposed to it pass it on to their friends. Typically a reproduction rate of over 1 (the average person who sees the content sends it to one or more of their friends) indicates that the number of infections is increased and the content has gone viral.
15. High Frequency Sharers
These are individuals who tend to share content more often than average people. Along with high reach sharers they form an important seeding demographic.
16. High Reach Sharers
These are individuals who tend to share content with more people than average people. Along with high frequency sharers they form an important seeding demographic.
17. Hook
A hook is the call-to-action present in a piece of viral content that is designed to make viewers of that content pass it on to their networks. Common hooks include humor, warnings, and implicit "forward this" messages.
18. Host
An individual who has been "infected" with a meme or viral idea. That individual may or may not further replicate the idea by passing it on to members of their social network.
19. Infection
When an individual is exposed to a meme or viral content, if they understand, remember and further spread it they can be considered "infected" by the idea virus.
20. Influencer
An individual who has a large audience and respected reputation in his or social network. When an influencer shares content, it tends to be received with higher-than-average assimilation rates.
21. Informational Cascade
The idea is presented in rigorous detail in a paper called “Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom and Cultural Change as Informational Cascades” written by Sushil Bikhchandani, David Hirshleifer and Ivo Welch and published in 1992: "An informational cascade occurs when it is optimal for an individual, having observed the actions of those ahead of him to follow the behavior of the preceding individual without regard to his own information..."
22. Linkbait
A piece of viral content that is design to attract the attention of bloggers who will then link to it, thereby increasing the amount of inbound links the site has. Typically done as part of an SEO strategy to improve organic search rankings and traffic.
23. Mashup
A form of communal recreation, a mashup is created when a user combines two or more existing services, products or content (often via an API) into a new product, service or content.
24. Meme
Richard Dawkins defined a meme as a "unit of cultural inheritance". These are ideas that spread from person to person, ideas like jokes, fashion trends, urban legends, folk sayings and gossip. When the first person discovered how to make fire the idea spread from person to person until the entirety of human civilization was "infected" with the meme and knew how to make fire. Dawkins based the word meme View definition in a new window on the Greek word "mimeme" but its similarity to Sumerian Me is unmistakable.
25. Network Hub
Similar to a connector, this is a person who is connected to more people than average in his or her social network. When network mapping is employed, hubs typically appear to be the "center."
26. Network Mapping
This is the process by which social networks can be represented visually to gain a better understanding of who the important connectors in that network are.
27. Pop
On a social news and voting site, when a piece of content reaches a certain threshold of votes it is promoted to the site's frontpage or popular section, where a much higher number of people are exposed to it. The content is said to have popped.
28. Power Account
Users on social networks, or social news sites that are well known to the community have more reputation and hence content shared by them is more widely read. Content posted by power users has a greater chance of becoming popular on most social news and voting sites.
29. Proverb
Proverbs are short sayings that operate in a primarily oral environment, and as such they display many of the same mnemonic traits necessary for purely oral retention and transmission such as alliteration, rhyme, and rhythm.
30. Reciprocity
Many users report reciprocity as a motivation for sharing content virally. They send their friends content so that in the future their friends will share important information with them.
31. Remix
The modern, technology-enabled version of communal recreation. Remixing occurs when a user takes a piece of content and customizes it, often via a mashup.
32. Replication
An individual replicates a meme by transmitting it to other people in their social network.
33. Reproduction Rate
The concept of a reproduction or transmission rate comes from epidemiology. It is the average number of new infections a person infected with a disease will cause. If this number is over 1 the infected population will grow, if it is below one they will shrink in the long term. It assumes a 0% immunity rate in the general population, meaning everyone exposed to the pathogen will become an infectious case themselves.
34. Reputation
Individuals become known to their social networks as they interact with them and a reputation is developed. Typically reach and assimilation rates can be affected both positively and negatively by a person's reputation. This is an important factor to consider when seeding content.
35. Retention
When an individual stores an idea virus or meme in his memory, he or she is said to have retained it.
36. Rumor
An unverified account or explanation of events circulating from person to person and pertaining to an object, event, or issue in public concern.
37. Sharing
When a user sends a piece of content to another user, or posts it to a social news, media or network site. This is the fundamental process of content "going viral."
38. Sibs
In 1940, the British military formed an organization as a part of the Special Operations Executive, or SOE, called the “Underground Propaganda Committee” or UPC whose mission was to create and disseminate rumors as defensive weapons against the expected Nazi invasion of the the English mainland. They code-named the rumor weapons “sibs,” short for siblare, latin word “to hiss.”
39. Slang
In an article written by David M. Hummon in 1994 for The Journal of Higher Education a workable definition is presented "an oral, highly expressive language not accepted as ‘good, formal usage’."
40. Sneezer
A term coined by Seth Godin, these people are similar to Gladwell's connectors, in that they are users who tend to share more content, with more people, more frequently than average users.
41. Social Bookmark
A shared, public bookmark that often allows users to comment, tag and/or vote on the content bookmarked.
42. Social Exchange Theory
The sociological underpinnings of the concept of reciprocity, Social exchange theory’s seminal work is Social Behavior as Exchange by George C. Homans. In it, he describes how social behavior is a form of exchange similar to operant conditioning: "the more valuable the sentiment or activity the members exchange with one another, the greater the average frequency of interaction of the members."
43. Social Media
Similar to user generated content, this is web content (news, video, images, etc) that is created by individuals, rather than companies. Online the term has come to mean sites like Flickr and Youtube where socially created content is uploaded and shared.
44. Social Media Optimization
The process by which a website or a piece of content is optimized to make the process of sharing it on social sites as easy and attractive as possible. Typically this includes activities like integrating links to social sites.
45. Social Network
A social network is a tight or loose collection of people who regularly share information. Online the term has come to mean sites like Facebook and Myspace who's primary function is to facilitate communication, conversation and connections between individuals.
46. Social News
Sites like Digg, Reddit, and Mixx are social news and voting sites. Users post content to these sites and other members vote for (or against in some cases) the quality of the content. Typically once a piece of content reaches a certain threshold of votes, it becomes popular and is exposed to a much larger audience on the site's homepage.
47. Social Proof
A function of informational cascades, social proof is the idea that people trust information that seems to be trusted by other people, and they will share content if it appears that many others are also sharing it. Email forward headers and social voting sites are an example of this effect at work.
48. Social Voting
A system by which users can vote for (and sometimes against) a piece of content. Typically this occurs on social news sites (like Digg and Reddit) and once a piece of content gains above a certain level of votes, it is promoted to a much wider audience. It is then said to have popped.
49. Splog
A blog created solely for the purposed of posting spam. Often used by unethical SEOs.
50. Synchronous Communication
Communication where messages are exchanged in realtime, for example telephone and instant message.
51. The Goliath Effect
A concept rooted in the study of urban legends and folklore, the Goliath Effect was first identified by Gary Alan Fine who wrote in The Journal of American Folklore in 1985 that “a larger percentage of American legends than predicted by chance refer to the most dominant corporation or product in a particular market” and that legends that exhibit this effect by referencing market giants reflect “Americans’ fear of bigness“.
52. Tim Draper
Tim Draper is the self-proclaimed creator of the term (but not the actual strategy) "viral marketing." His original suggestion to use "viral marketing" in web-based e-mail to geometrically spread an Internet product to its market was instrumental to the successes of Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail, however other companies and products used this tactic before Draper coined the term.
53. Tipping Point
As popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, a tipping point is a moment at which the adoption of a new idea reaches critical mass and the number of infected individuals begins to grow exponentially.Gladwell defines it as: "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point."
54. Transmission
The process by which an individual infected with a meme or idea virus exposes another person to it, and that person also becomes infected.
55. Vector
The medium, media or demographic segment that is targeted and used for the replication of a piece of viral content. Social networks, specific sites or blogs, microblogging platforms (such as Twitter) or subcultures may all be considered viral vectors.
56. Viral Seeding
Once a piece of viral content is created, it has to be distributed to a group of people that will then share it with their networks. These first people are called seeds because they then help grow and spread the content.
57. Widget
A small application that can be embedded in another website, and thus spreads around the web. The Youtube embedded video player is an example of a widget.
58. Word of Mouth
The passing of information by verbal means, especially recommendations, but also general information, in an informal, person-to-person manner. Often abbreviated as WOM. Word of mouth marketing (WOMM) can occur offline or online.
