The massive success of The Walking Dead lies in a perfect mixture of talented storytelling and pragmatic marketing.

For instance, they were the first TV show to realize that we lived in the smartphone and Podcast era and so they were the first show ever to launch with their own Talk Show attached, The Talking Dead.

Timing is the New Location

They learned to market in the year they live in, and as a consequence their success was a fairly easy thing to predict, it's the most popular show on television for a reason.

Even as recently as last summer, after the eminent entrée en scène of the series's villian extraordinaire Negan and his Baseball bat Lucille, they didn't hesitate in sending replicas of the infamous weapon to the most influential TWD bloggers and Youtubers around the world.

As you may guess they were ecstatic, and as a consequence they promoted their favorite show even further. Because when you care people respond.

Now, once the replicas were made, AMC could've told Vilfredo Pareto to come out the grave and shove his 80/20 principle in his... Whatever.

But they didn't, they played it smart. Instead of randomly sending the presents to aleatory fans to promote the show, what they did is to find people who are already engaged and who already had a fan base of their own and they created a win-win situation for all parties involved.

On one side, AMC had the most influential TWD bloggers on their side to promote them, and for the Youtubers and bloggers, they had a special present to show credibility, recognition, and gratitude for their work.

It worked out for everyone, because at the end of the day nothing beats voluntary.

We live in interesting times, peer-to-peer technologies are a part of everyday life now, and 'disruption' is becoming one of the most used words in our era.

Before big companies like Coca Cola tended to reach out to the six major TV channels and splash the big bucks on them because that's where the attention was. But it's not anymore.

It's only a matter of time until those big companies realize where the attention is, and for those big bucks to move from those cable channels to the tons of influential creators on the internet who most amazingly of all, are not monetizing much in proportion to their pull.

Right now the timing is excellent, even more so now since YouTube has pulled monetization from thousands of influential creators.

Nowadays there are enough tools in the market to reach your target audience if you're really serious about it, which then opens the door to three possibilities:

You can either go at it randomly and hope for the best and if you're lucky you won't end up tired and dehydrated as described in Justine Musk's quote in the first post of this two-part series.

You can keep changing your product every two days in hopes that you find something that pleases everyone, maybe risking getting more lost than the dehydrated guy above.

Or you can increase your chances of success by targeting the people that you know have more pre-disposition to adopt the service that you provide, and the two parties enter in a mutually beneficial relationship. And if you want to be pragmatic, you can focus on the connectors like what AMC did.

The Law of the Few

“The Law of the Few says that there are exceptional people out there who are capable of starting epidemics. All you have to do is find them. The lesson of stickiness is the same. There is a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible. All you have to do is find it.”

― Malcolm Gladwell, The tipping point.

Two weeks ago I wrote a post tiled Time for a steemit Outreach Program? And since I've been happy to observe several initiatives, plans, strategies, groups coming together, even Think-Tanks of sorts.

All to help steemit grow in audience and bring more quality content, and walk together towards mass adoption. Even more amazing is that everyone is thinking about the same thing at the same time.

It almost seems like a new trend taking off on steemit, and quite honestly I'm glad so many people are coming together again for the steem dream that we all share.

It has been an amazing six months and I won't have it any other way. We've had some ups and downs? Sure. Who doesn't? It's like life itself, there is always up and down.

The bad moments were mainly people leaving the platform, but the community is coming together to address that too. Not only to resist and retain, but to grow the audience even bigger than before.

Because we are not only resilient, we are anti-fragile. We get stronger.

And So it Begins...

Image Sources: 1 - 2 - 3