While I was reading it I came to the conclusion that success at social media marketing and having your business idea spread virally comes down to two main factors: creativity and understanding the tools that the internet provides. You may have a good understanding of how to use all the internet tools: blogging, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Squidoo, ebooks, monitoring your brand using Tweet Scan, Google Alerts, Boardtracker, Social Mention, trying to build competitions, interactive tools, applications, widgets; but if you don’t have something creative that’s worth spreading it won’t spread. The creative content part is harder than the tools part.

One way to start getting creative is to put your message in terms of the need that your business solves. Scott says:

By truly understanding the market problems that your products and services solve for your buyer personas, you transform your marketing from mere product-specific, egocentric gobbledygook that only you understand and care about into valuable information people are eager to consume and that they use to make the choice to do business with your organization.

Once you’ve gotten down to the needs that your product fulfills, then you can start trying to come up with creative ideas around communicating your solution to that need. After that there is not much advice one can give on how to be creative. I guess you could try brainstorming ideas. Another good idea in the book is to try lots of things in hopes that at least one of them sticks.

Many attempts will be duds that won’t spark any interest; a few will generate some notice and basically pay back your investment of the time required to make them; and a handful will spread to thousands or even millions of people and make the entire program of 10 or 20 initiatives worthwhile.

Realistically I think you’re more likely to make a hit if you try 50 to 100 initiatives.

So there’s the problem with most of these internet marketing books; they can’t explain to you how to creatively use the tools that the internet provides to spread your message. They can only show you the successful ideas other people have had. That’s the hardest part and only you can figure it out.

Having a handful of people highly motivated and a mass of barely motivated ones used to be a recipe for frustration. The people who were on fire wondered why the general population didn’t care more, and the general population wondered why these obsessed people didn’t just shut up.

This is because:

The number of people who are willing to start something is smaller, much smaller, than the number of people who are willing to contribute once someone else starts something. Many people care a little about causes and events, but not many care enough to do anything about it on their own,  both because that kind of effort is hard and because individual actions have so little effect on big corporations.

But that’s now OK because:

Social media lowers the hurdles to doing something in the first place, so that people who cared a little could participate a little, while being effective in aggregate.

This is important in marketing your business on the internet because:

Now the highly motivated people can create a context more easily in which the barely motivated people can be effective without having to become activities themselves.

Get those less than loyal customers to engage with you, even if it is a little bit. Social media marketing allows your little brand to have a chance. Every extra person is another drop in the bucket that helps your idea to spread.

3 stories:

#1 The bank HSBC recruited students by promising checking accounts that carried no penalty for overdrafts. Then, HSBC decided to revoke the policy, giving the students only a few weeks notice about the change. But they didn’t expect students to create and join a group on Facebook called “Stop the Great HSBC Rip-Off!” Shortly afterwords HSBC caved in and reversed the policy.

#2 Flight 1348 was grounded in Dallas due to bad weather and sat on the ground for eight hours before passengers were let off. On passenger on that flight formed a group to represent the rights of passengers called The Airline Passenger’s Bill of Rights. She started this group by commenting on an article on the web which attracted more of the passengers and together they made an online petition with 2,000 names. The bill ended up at the Senate.

#3 A girl in New York looses her Sidekick cell phone in a cab and discovers that her phone ended up with a girl in Queens. She found this out by seeing photos taken by the thief with her old phone that were transferred to her new one. She asked for the phone back but the girl in Queens refused. So they created a website with pictures and a description of the events. Soon, thanks to sites like Digg, they were getting ten emails a minuet from people offering encouragement and help. After dozens of complaints to the NYPD, the cops were sent out, the thief arrested, and the phone returned.

What do these stories have in common?:

These groups were successful because of a cause that all the participants believed in. The saying goes: people will work for money but they will die for a cause. For your social media marketing to be successful you have to make it a cause people will die for.

Creating a Facebook page that consists of your business name will not attract anyone, let alone inspire them to recruit others. instead of “yourbusinessesnamehere Facebook Fan Page”, try a cause in your business industry: (if you’re a restaurant) “The Coalition to Stop Bad BBQ!”, or (if you’re a salon) “1 Million People Against Faux Hawks!”.  You get the idea…