99 Ways to Influence Change, #19: Make it viral

In today’s attention-overload workplace, it is easy for your change message to be lost.  With the advent of social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, it seems the only way to gain a lot of attention nowadays is to make your message viral.  That is, it needs to gain momentum by spreading from person to person.

First, make the message or activity something that people will want to share with friends and coworkers – for example:  entertaining, informative, fascinating, fun or helpful.  Next, build in the capability for people to share what they learn or what they are doing, perhaps add the ability rate it or comment on it.  Some examples:

• A quiz about the organization’s strategy in which employees can challenge each other to beat their high score
• A volunteer activity sign up form where employees can invite their coworkers to participate
• An idea contest in which employees encourage their colleagues to vote for their ideas

Of course, enabling a change message to go viral requires letting go of control, but in exchange it becomes more visible and can gain momentum on its own.  And if it doesn’t have the intended effect, you will be able see that easily as well.

How might you make your change viral?

Read more of the 99 Ways to Influence Change.