Designing for Spreadability

Designing for Spreadability

            When anyone posts anything, I think they always should have who their audience is in mind. It is vital to the success of marketing. Even if you are just marketing yourself and how you interact with the world. Just imagine trying to teach thermodynamics to a group of sticky kindergarteners. Nothing would get through to them, it would not make sense, and interest would be lost. Understanding the audience you are marketing to is of upmost importance. You want to design posts and ads and be in tune with your audience. Listen to what they want. See things through their eyes. Doing so provides a way for the content that is put out to be unique and spreadable. This is what we will be discussing in this chapter. Paying attention to the audience and “designing for Spreadability”.

            The uncertainty principle is something all creative industries struggle with. Will the audience respond to what is being put out to them? There are strategies though to combat this issue. They gather statistics and make many considerations in the process of creating the content thy will be putting out. This goes back to the listening and understanding the audience to which you are marketing to. Overproduction can help with the spreadability of media. In fact, it is the primary response to the uncertainty in media. The strategy here is creating more creative goods then necessary and putting all of it out to consumers. They then go back in to see what worked and what did not. Take the company Sand Cloud for example. The amount and variety of media they put out is kind of overwhelming. They always have something new to put out. And market anyway they know how to, and to as many varieties of consumers as possible. But as this book states, you always have to build on the past successes to gain future success.

            Spreadable media can only gain these successes through platform and other “strategic considerations”. The media we share is on the platforms we use. So posting an article in a newspaper will be WAY less likely to be spreadable in this era than if it were to be posted on Twitter or facebook or Instagram or news websites or Snapchat (Over production!). All of these platforms will always exhibit patterns of shared content. Who is sharing, what is being shared, what creative ways did the company advertise that is so enticing to the consumer to share? Along with the pictorial content come the textual content. You wouldn’t be invented in a product or post it it said “buy this.”, would you? Companies need to “encode “messages to their consumers and make them think about the product. Going back to Sand Cloud, they donate a percentage of their profit to marine organizations around the world. “Save the Fishies” is their catch phrase. This adds meaning to their products, posts, and articles. The text has to revolve around the consumers passions and likes and interests, not the company, to be spread worthy. Wording and ways of using words is very important! Things need to create interest, contain humor, tug at heart-strings, contain mystery. It is all part of the process.

            Not all spreadable, as we have all observed I’m sure, has to be positive. I am also sure at some point you have commented on or shared something you deemed controversial. This is a big one among things of pop culture, health, and politics. There is so much pull to share and engage in this kind of media. It’s exciting and also fun to share your beliefs, even if unpopular. Or maybe you love to argue, so you comment on a post. This is how these things spread. And we sll love a good rumor. “*gasp* The Kardashians did whaaaaat?”. “Trump is a whaaaaat?”. We engage with these things because it is human nature. And media creates these things, because we are willing to share.

            Spreadable content strategies are not just limited to media companies trying to gain exposure. Civic media plays an active role in this as well. All of these organizations, including political candidates, grassroots organizations (activists too), and individual citizens, want to make sure their content is being spread too. Of course they have the means of broadcasting, but other than that, how would they expect their messages to spread? By word of mouth! Very old school… perhaps residual *gasp*! Their calls of action can get supports to help spread the word. They can make the posts and talk about it among themselves. Its like those all too familiar political posts your racist uncle makes on Facebook or at thanksgiving dinner. Or like seeing an activist group in your city and posting about it on Instagram. Often, too, they rely on the controversy or Avatar Activism to gain coverage and spark conversation between their followers. They strategy of parody plays a huge role in this. Like the example in the book about protesting their land. The protestors painted themselves blue, like the characters from Avatar, and were chanting a quote from the movie. This spread all over YouTube and other protests like that soon followed. And we can see that circulating media is a large part of the society we have lived in in the past, as well as the society we live in today. I think that overall we don’t really pay attention to the ways that the media we see is being sent out to us. But there really is a way to do it that ensures that you will see it. Language, humor, mystery. All the things put out to get you to click and share.