When he was only 12 years old Emerson Spartz convinced his parents to let him home school himself. That same year he founded MuggleNet, "the world's #1 Harry Potter fan site." To increase the traffic on his site, Spartz began tirelessly emailing thousands of webmasters from other Harry Potter fan sites asking them to link to MuggleNet. This positive experience with virality (as in "going viral") caused a shift in the focus of his homeschooling curriculum.
Spartz became obsessed with virality. He wanted to harness it and use it to change the world. Running MuggleNet gave Spartz the business experience he needed: by applying basic management science to a very primitive fandom he was able to recruit a group of 120 paid and unpaid freelancers to contribute content and help grow the site.
After he realized the quickest way to learn was by reading biographies of successful people, Spartz, a speed reader, began reading four biographies a day, he said. “Since I was spending so much time reading about the lives of successful people I started learning how to emulate those patterns. If you study people who have already figured it out you will get there a lot quicker—trial and error sucks,” Spartz said.
After studying neuroscience he realized that your brain can’t tell the difference between what you vividly imaged and what you actually experienced, allowing you to learn from others and cram decades of experience into a short period of time. It was during this time that Spartz began to nail down the keys to viral success. Now, at only 25 years old he has become the CEO of Spartz Media and an expert on virality.
“The more incentive you give people to share, the more likely they are to share,” Spartz said when summarizing his conclusions on virality. This simple phrase has large implications. Because virality is the online version of world of mouth marketing, you can successfully employ certain marketing tactics.
To make something viral you need a product that is memorable and loud, so when people are using it others take notice. This can be done through unique packaging like the bright blue sleeve on the New York Times delivery paper or a simple signature asking you to sign up in the bottom of an email, like Hotmail did. Spartz also suggests incorporating discounts and actively asking for referrals.
“Build a great product, but don’t let your marking strategy depend on just having a great product,” Spartz said. The marketing campaign behind a viral product must be polarizing: according to Spartz, you need to find a way to make people pissed off or make them super happy so they will share your content.
