Researchers answer the question “What do people share?” when they send articles and news-worthy information to their spheres of influence. What they find could influence your company’s customer experience program.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania studied the New York Times list of most-e-mailed articles, tracking more than 7,500 articles published online from August 2008 to February 2009. They analyzed the “virality” of the content, controlling for factors like the placement in the paper or on the Web home page. Ultimately, they were attempting to answer the question ‘What do people share?’
People preferred e-mailing articles with positive rather than negative themes, and they liked to send long articles on intellectually challenging topics. Perhaps most of all, readers wanted to share articles that inspired awe, an emotion that the researchers investigated after noticing how many science articles made the list.
What was most interesting to me was the finding that
More emotional stories were more likely to be e-mailed, the researchers found, and positive articles were shared more than negative ones. Longer articles generally did better than shorter articles, although Dr. Berger said that might just be because the longer articles were about more engaging topics.
Does your organization’s customer experience evoke emotional stories amongst your customers? Does your service provide awe-inspiring customer service that causes people to write about that experience? These may not be directly achievable within your industry, but delivering a customer experience that people tell others about is.
What was the last awe-inspiring story you read?
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By Colin Shaw | Published: April 16, 2010