by James Duthie at Online Marketing Banter. You can follow him at @JamesDuthie.
Can the simple flutter of a butterfly’s wings change the world forever? If you’re a believer in the butterfly effect, the answer is indeed yes.
The notion of the butterfly effect states that a seemingly minor event can create ripples that ultimately trigger an outcome of far larger proportions.
It’s known as the butterfly effect based on the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the earth can create a tornado on the other side. While the concept is largely born from literature, real life butterfly effects are now evident online everyday. In fact, Twitter may well be the perfect metaphor for the real life application of the butterfly effect. And I have the case study to prove it. It shows the effect of a single Tweet in creating a virtual tornado of web traffic.
It all started with a flutter…
The original flutter
This real life butterfly effect centres around a story I published entitled Twitter whoring goes mainstream. The post analysed John Mayer’s decision to introduce paid ads into his Twitter stream. A little confrontational perhaps, but a story that eventually led thousands of new visitors to my blog. So how did the avalanche begin? With a flutter. A minor event. A subtle flapping of the wings. Or in real terms… a single Tweet from Darren Rowse endorsing the story.
Admittedly, when the Tweet resonates from Darren Rowse the scale of the flutter is more akin to wings of a 747 than a butterfly. But the fact is that without this single minor event, the ensuing storm would never have followed. Which is the true embodiment of a butterfly effect.
The initial ripples
The ripples in the environment were felt almost instantaneously. With over 40,000 Twitter followers, Darren’s single Tweet reached a broad audience. This audience embraced and shared the message, forming the nucleus of the butterfly effect. Within minutes the story was being re-Tweeted and shared between countless other Twitter networks. The ripples reverberated for up to 24 hours, with the post being shared 68 times. The original flutter had taken flight.
The ripple becomes a tornado
The true tornado took form as the viral activity within Twitter transferred across to other external networks. The popularity of the story within Twitter was quickly identified by several external aggregator services that monitor stories creating buzz. Within hours of Darren’s original Tweet, the story had reached the front page of Pop URLs, Twitturly and Retweetist, each of which uses re-Tweet behaviour to identify and promote popular posts.
The visibility of the story continued to grow as it was submitted to other social networks such as StumbleUpon and Social Median. What started out as a single Tweet had now spread exponentially both within Twitter and beyond. While it wasn’t the perfect storm, the tornado was well and truly in full flight. Within 24 hours, that storm had delivered thousands of new visitors to my blog. The butterfly effect was evident. The flutter had created a storm.
Creating your own butterfly effect
My story is far from unique. Every day, hundreds of bloggers across the web experience a butterfly effect of their own. Which means you can too. I’ve broken down the three core elements that contributed to the success of my butterfly effect:
The power advocate
My work has been Tweeted and re-Tweeted many times. Yet I’d never experienced a butterfly effect of this magnitude. Why? Simple… the source of the referral. Darren is one of the most recognised and trusted Tweeters on the planet. An endorsement from an industry leader gives a story the visibility it needs for a minor flutter to snowball into something much bigger.
Securing an endorsement from an industry leader is infinitely harder however. While I’d love to believe Darren regularly reads my blog I know that’s not the case. What I do know is that industry leaders are masters of reputation management. My story included a link to a ‘pay-per-Tweet’ post that Darren published almost a year ago. Linking to or mentioning bloggers is one of the best ways to capture their attention (also known as the ego hook; see below). However, use this tactic sparingly. Industry heavyweights will see through the tactic very quickly if used repeatedly.
The hook
Capturing a power bloggers attention is just the first step. The next step is to intrigue them with your story. For this you need a hook. It is the hook that makes the story remarkable, intriguing and ultimately sharable. Boring content stands no chance of taking flight. Todd Malicoat wrote an excellent article on the use of hooks, in which he defined seven types of hooks that facilitate content sharing:
- The news hook
- The contrary hook
- The attack hook
- The resource hook
- The humour hook
- The ego hook
- The incentive hook
I recommend reading Todd’s article for a full explanation of each of the hooks. In my case, I combined an attack hook with a news hook to create a compelling story. Throw in a touch of celebrity gossip and a controversial opinion and the content is laden with hooks to catch the reader’s attention.
The headline
The ego hook may be enough to capture one specific blogger’s attention. But for everyone else you’re going to need something stronger. Which is where the headline comes into play. In a format like Twitter, the headline is the only content the viewer is likely to see. The decision whether to click will be made exclusively based on the headline. But rather than regurgitating well documented tips on writing great headlines, I’ll simply point you towards Copyblogger for guidance on writing headlines that work.
The heading I chose (Twitter whoring goes mainstream) worked because it was short yet descriptive with a touch of controversy. In particular, the use of the word ‘whoring’ created intrigue and interest in the topic. However much like the ego hook, headline baiting will quickly lose impact if the content fails to deliver.
Getting advice from the real expert
Of course, if you still need further clarification on how to create your own butterfly effect it’s reassuring to know that expert advice resides within the Twitter community. As many of you know, Ashton Kutcher is one of Twitter’s highest profile users. And as star of the 2004 movie The Butterfly Effect, Ashton understands the concept better than most. For all additional questions relating to the butterfly effect, please see Ashton…
@NateDesmond
Yes, the key is getting someone with enough followers to promote your post. Once 40,000 people find out about it, a lot of them are bound to like it.
Thanks,
Nate
@jesseluna
Great post James! I like your methods for getting attention from The Big Folks. It appears to be effective and *doesn’t* aim to beat someone over the head with a blog post to get them to pay attention. Hope you get an Ashton tsunami on this one.
@beyluen
You should have a good relationship with your followers in order to enjoy butterfly effect.
@cbedon
Agreed with Chung, building a good network so people like what you find,read, post.
@ecomind
Great article!
In the Butterfly Effect Ashtons character travels back in time, and is able to redo some of his past.
Don’t think I am able to do that. But one of my favorite tattoos that I have myself, is a tattoo of a butterfly. This to remind me of my past, and some of the things I want to learn from my past.
One of these days I will be able to adapt the Butterfly Effect both to my tweets and my blog.
In the mean time I keep up reading all the excellent tips from Twitip and Problogger
Cheers…
@christianderson
I thought what you did was called “journalism.” The piece was good and you positioned it well. You had the elements of a good story, you made it available and people read it. What great about social media is anyone and everyone is empowered to do that. Powerful stuff.
Building a network is the way to do. If you can do that you will become very successful on twitter. If you don’t, then you likely will not.
@brandonacox
I love the article – it is a perfect example of what “viral” is all about and the hooks are helpful, but anyone who is going to utilize this article to its fullest potential needs to be aware that you’re going to put yourself out there in such a way that you’ll be wide open to rebuttal. Just be warned. Sometimes it’s worth it.
@siahro
Well it looks like Darren did it again for you! I would’ve never seen this article if it were not for his tweet. Good stuff
@NaomiTrower
I LOVE the hook info! I’m off to read more hook info..
@gatheredgarden
Very interesting article. The idea that someone has 40,000 followers is mind-boggling!
@JamesDuthie
Thanks for all the positive comments guys. And I have to agree with Chung & Christhian that building your own network is also vitally important. With a strong network the need for a power advocate is reduced.
I also like Brandon’s comment which is indeed true. A butterfly effect based on a controversial post will often attract criticism, so a thick skin is needed. But this can also create another hook for the post by facilitating strong debate within the comments.
@vpsean
What a great story! I love it.
I fully believe in the butter effect, and especially of getting under the wing of thought leaders and great mentors.
For me, being taken under the wing of one of the teachers from the Secret was one of the biggest things for me…and then even BIGGER things happened. It all started though because of other little events that occurred in years prior that lead me on a path, a journey of personal growth and self-development, which ultimately lead me to flying with the eagles.
–Sean Patrick Simpson
@BloggerAgent001
To make some thing a buzz you need to have large number of twitter followers. Its probably easy for big bloggers.
@hectorhenry17
Graet try out try out.
@lethalbv01
This is well written and extensive post. I enjoyed it. I still think Twitter will eventually die out. I think it is going to turn into another spam social media site like many of the other ones.
There are already so many people automating replies and just trying to promote and don’t really care about the conversational aspect of it. Then again, maybe I am just now following the right people.
@karlfoxley
This is a really great post; informative and to the point. Every online marketer needs to understand the power of Butterflies, you only have to look at the viral element of the Butterfly Marketing Manuscript by Mr Mike Filsaime to see how this works.
I was one of those people that never got Twitter… after really taking the time to give Twitter a try I am a Twitterholic (is that the right term
).
Thanks for posting.
Karl
@teddyrised
Same here, I couldn’t agree more with what Chung and Cristhian said – building a network of followers that actually get inspired by what you say (you’ve to make sure that you’re not tweeting about mundane stuff all the time, heh) is of great importance. An advantage of having a huge network of followers is by probability (and interest as well, I’m not negating that), the more followers you have, a greater number of them will pick up what you’ve just tweeted and will help to spread the word.
Of course, tweeters with a small following shall not be discouraged – anything newsworthy that is capable to capturing the attention of the masses, will be equally powerful in eliciting a strong butterfly effect. It all boils down to the content one is sharing on Twitter
Thanks for the great writeup!
@tiphereth
The web tracking technologies enable one to track the links themselves via 3rd party URL shorteners such as HootSuite and Tweet burner, which lets see how many times your URL gets clicked on. It’s great to see the effect of a link that hits the spot. But you also take the risk of annoying your followers if all you post are links to your own work. Mix it up with conversation and links to other content.
@skyhome
You might enjoy this Being Five strip about blogs/butterfly. Coincidentally I just saw it in my feed reader about 30 seconds before I saw this (your) blog post in my reader. Enjoy!
@inspiredworlds
not that easy getting a power blogger to notice your work. for regular folk, i agree with @tip using hootsuite will help as it identifies number of clicks and where the visitors are clicking from, and it will help u develop better understanding of which tweets are popular.
i dont know if there’s any formula or principles for getting your stuff noticed. sometimes it just happens if a few people start forwarding it and it multiples out of control. a good example are email forwards – if they are really funny or unique, it gets flicked around quickly.
totally agree w butterfly effect. its just figuring out how to start one.
great movie too – very intense!!!!!!!!!!
@mikkitphd
This article really inspired me. I kept thinking about twitter’s butterfly effectual ability to be encouraged by and among those throughout the universe; and wrote about it: http://reinventingm3.blogspot.com/2009/03/when-i-grow-up-i-wanna-be-writer.html. Waiting for my own “twitter tsunami” one day soon!