SOCIAL - Facebookers WILL Rally Around Your Product

SOCIAL - Facebook Users WILL Rally Around Your Product

Mike Stiles

Every once in awhile, the breaks fall your way.  And when it comes to what makes people on Facebook connect with one another and become ?friends,? radio gets a break.  Turns out music is one of the things that actually influences people to come together if they share the same taste in it, at least to some degree.

Three brains out of Harvard conducted a 4-year study to find out why people friend each other, especially if they are in fact not friends and have never even seen, met, or interacted with each other.  When I was college, such behavior was called ?highly dangerous,? but it?s a different world now.

But yes, music, along with movies, is a key indicator of whether two people are likely to be Facebook friends.  This means if Maddie likes Korn, and so does Cheryl, Maddie and Cheryl might become friends because they don?t really come across that many other 14-year-old girls who are as into Korn as they are.  Interestingly, books wield no such power.  Sharing the same taste in books did not appear to lead to any higher likelihood that two Facebook users would be friends or connected.  This tells me the passion level for books is not nearly as high as it is for music and movies, and users don?t use books to define and express themselves the same way they do with music.

Now, what if Cheryl didn?t like Korn when she friended Maddie?  Is she likely to start liking them because Cheryl does?  No.  The research shows that people are not as easily influenced as we might believe.  So keep that in mind if you?re trying to win people over to your tastes in music by alerting them to everything you listen to on Spotify.  However?(there?s always a however)?this does not hold true if the Facebook friends like classical or jazz.  Go figure, Harvard didn?t even attempt to offer an explanation as to why jazz lovers are more influential.

So there you are, a content producer whose product is?music.  You may have been knocking your lights out trying to get your listeners to come together on your social streams around the tent pole of a mutual love for your radio station.  The smarter play might be to bring listeners together around the music (both the music and information about the artists) and take credit for being the instrument that made the introductions. 

Mike Stiles is a writer/producer with the social marketing tech platform, Vitrue, and head of Sketchworks comedy theatre. Check out his monologue blog, The Stiles Files.

Find him on Facebook or on Twitter @mikestiles

Links

Facebook: www.facebook.com

Harvard: www.harvard.edu

Korn: www.korn.com

Spotify: www.spotify.com

Vitrue: www.vitrue.com

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