Jonah Berger [Archive.org URL]

One thing that my colleagues and I are thinking about now is how the different channels that we use for sharing affect what we say. Face to face, we don’t want to sit in silence, so we say anything to pass the time. But online is a written medium, which allows us more time to construct and refine what we want to pass on. We curate our online identity. We can delete our post, we can revise our post, or we can decide not to send it.

Online it’s much more about social currency (how is this going to make me look and if it won’t make me look good, how can I revise it), whereas offline it’s much more about triggers (what’s top-of-mind that can fill the conversational space). By carefully considering how people share in a given context, companies can better design their messages for that context. Tailoring messages based on the communication channel will be essential for marketers.

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