Book Summary: Contagious by Jonah Berger | Sam Thomas Davies

After analyzing hundreds of contagious messages, products, and ideas, Jonah Berger noticed that the same six “ingredients,” or principles, were often at work:

1. Social Currency                
2. Triggers
3. Emotion 
4. Public
5. Practical Value
6. Stories        

These principles can be compacted into an acronym. Taken together, they spell STEPPS.

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,” writes Berger. “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.” 

Berger recommends three ways to get people talking about a product or an idea: 

1. Find inner remarkability; 
2. Leverage game mechanics; and
3. Make people feel like insiders.