People share things that make them look good to others: Just as people use money to buy products or services, they use social currency to achieve desired positive impressions among their families, friends, and colleagues, so to get people talking, companies and organizations need to mint social currency. Give people a way to make themselves look good while promoting their products and ideas along the way.”

Top of mind means tip of the tongue: Products and ideas have habitats or sets of triggers that cause people to think about them. What’s more, it’s possible to grow an idea’s habitat by creating new links to stimuli in the environment. Kit Kat wouldn’t normally be associated with coffee, but through repeated pairing in an ad campaign, it was able to link the two and lift sales by 8 percent.

When we care, we share: Make products or ideas catch on, focus on feelings; the underlying emotions that motivate people to action. What’s more, remember to pick ones that kindle the fire, activate people, and drive them to action.

If something is built to show, it’s built to grow: Designing products that advertise themselves is a particularly powerful strategy for small companies or organizations that don’t have a lot of resources.

People like to pass along practical, useful information: Why some useful content gets shared more, a couple of points are worth noting. The first is how the information is packaged. The second key is the audience.

Information travels under the guise of idle chatter: Virality is most valuable when the brand or product benefit is integral to the story. When it’s woven so deeply into the narrative that people can’t tell the story without mentioning it.