Thread by @lennysan

7 ways to increase your product's virality:
1. Nurture WOM
2. Incentivize WOM
3. Make the product better w/ friends/colleagues
4. Make the product only useful w/ friends/colleagues
5. Generate sharable content
6. Increase experiential serendipity
7. Increase engagement

Thread 🧵

But first, make sure your product is suited for virality:
✅ It's innately fun or rewarding to share (e.g. travel photos, homes for sale, incidents nearby)
✅ It's better with friends or colleagues (e.g. Snapchat, Slack)
✅ It's is remarkable — something worth remarking about

Strategy 1: Nurture organic word-of-mouth

Word-of-mouth is primarily driven by remarkable experiences (an experience worth remarking about), so start there.

Examples: Tinder, Clubhouse, Airbnb, Levels

🤔 How might you create one, or more, remarkable experience for your users?
🤔 How might you get non-users with a large following to experience your remarkable product? e.g. free accounts for influencers

🤔 How might you make your users feel special or high-status by showing off they have the product? e.g. invite-only
🤔 How might you make it easier for your users to spread the word? e.g. share buttons
🤔 How might you simply ask people to spread the word? e.g. add copy asking

Strategy 2: Incentivize word-of-mouth and inviting

People respond to incentives — what’s it in for them to spread the good word about your product?

Examples: Dropbox, Paypal, Pinduoduo, Robinhood

🤔 How might you create a selfish incentive for users to bring in new users? e.g. free money, free storage

🤔 How might you create an altruistic incentive for users bringing in new users? e.g. save your friend money

🤔 How might you create FOMO which motivated users to send invites? e.g. a limited number of invites like Gmail, Clubhouse, Spotify, Superhuman, OnePlus

🤔 How might you boost an existing incentive? e.g. double your existing bonus

🤔 How might you surface your existing incentives more prominently? e.g. a large banner, more entry points

🤔 How might you make it easier for your users to know who to invite? e.g. import contact list, connect to Twitter to find friends

Strategy #3: Make the product better when more friends or colleagues use it

This is the most classic way to create viral growth and is hard to engineer after the fact. But there are certainly ways to optimize it.

Examples: Figma, Datadog, Snapchat, Signal, LinkedIn

🤔 How might you make the user’s life easier if their friends or colleagues were also using it? e.g. easier to share content

🤔 How might you make the user’s life more enjoyable if their friends or colleagues were also using it? e.g. most fun way to share content

🤔 How might you remind the user about the benefits of their friends/colleagues being users? e.g. show missing friends

🤔 How might you make it easier to invite friends? e.g. import contact list, LDAP

🤔 How might you make it easier to figure out who to invite? e.g. smart sort

Strategy #4: Make the product *only* useful when using it with friends or colleagues

This includes products that are utilitarian, and is even harder to engineer after the fact. But it is worth thinking about this when you’re in the idea stage.

Examples: Calendly, DocuSign, Zoom

🤔 How might you make a single-player product multi-player?

🤔 How might you better promote your product to the receiving user?

🤔 How might you make it easier for new users to try out your product?

Strategy #5: Generate content that users want to share with friends

This form of virality comes from content generated through the product, which your users can’t help but share with their friends.

Examples: Spotify Wrapped, TikTok videos with watermark, Pinterest boards

🤔 How might you enable your users to create remarkable content? e.g. TikTok creator tools

🤔 How might you create remarkable content for your users yourself? e.g. Spotify Wrapped

🤔 How might you make it easier to share the content you already have? e.g. share buttons, Twitch clips

🤔 How might you make it clearer where the content came from? e.g. adding a watermark

🤔 How might you make your content available publicly? e.g. FB making posts public

Strategy #6: Increase experiential serendipity

This form of virality is when people see the product in action during the normal course of events.

Examples: Citizen, Hotmail, Tinder, Superhuman, Dropbox

🤔 How might you publicly show that a friend or colleague is using the product? e.g. inline signature block, pink mustaches

🤔 How might you allow users to share interesting information from the app?

🤔 How might you send interesting push notifications during the day?

Strategy #7: Increase engaged users

One final strategy for increasing viral growth is to increase the number of engaged users — users who in turn will bring in new users. You’re essentially putting more fuel on the fire.

Examples:
• Facebook’s People You May Know, which increased the engagement of both users
• Facebook letting you to tag friends in photos, which pulled those friends back into Facebook
• TikTok duets feature, making it easier to create multi-player content

For even on this, check out the full post
lennysnewsletter.com/p/increasing-v…