For my Public Relations and Administration class we had to read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. The front cover of this book says, “How little things can make a big difference” and I think that this sums up what Gladwell talks about in his book.
Throughout the book Gladwell talks about how one small occurrence or happening causes an idea, disease, event, or anything of that nature to “tip”. When it tips, it spreads at an exponential rate. This tipping occurs through three different rules, the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context. When all of these three things come together correctly, you have a tipping point. In his book, Gladwell cites examples such as the comeback of Hushpuppies, the midnight ride of Paul Revere, and others as events that, thanks to the use of these three rules, were able to tip and influence far more people than expected. This tipping point can be both a good thing and a bad thing. One of the negative tipping points Gladwell cited was an epidemic of syphilis in Baltimore. Cases of syphilis tipped so quickly that in the span of a year, the number of children born with the disease increased by 500 percent. It is numbers like these that show just how influential tipping points can be.
In the Law of the Few Gladwell divides people into three different “types”. These are the Connectors, the Mavens, and the Salesmen. The Connector is a person who knows lots of people. They are people who have an extraordinary knack of making friends and acquaintances. These people have an intricate network of “weak ties” that they are able to use to their advantage. The second group is the Maven, someone who accumulates knowledge. The Maven does not keep this wealth of knowledge to themselves but passes it along to others. Mavens want to solve others problems, and they generally do this by solving their own. “The fact that mavens want to help, for no other reason than because they like to help, turns out to be an awfully effective way of getting someone’s attention.” (67) The last group of people is the Salesmen. Salesmen have skills to persuade us when we are unconvinced of what we hear. They are bubbly and energetic people who draw you in and make you feel welcome. These three types of people together are the glue that makes a tipping point.
Out of these three people, I believe that I am a Maven. I love learning about new things and then telling others about them. When I gain information, I am quick to pass it along to others who I know are interested. I feel like I am more of Maven in certain areas than others. For example, I check People.com all day every day and my friends are quick to call me the pop-culture junkie. In the book, Gladwell talks about how many Connectors get their information from Mavens and I have a real life example of this! I have a good friend who works at a PR Firm in Athens and she is defiantly a Connector. One afternoon she called me after work wanting to know if I knew of any well-known women who lived in the Denver, Colorado area who would be a good person to speak at an event for a new Nike product for women. I was able to do a little digging on the Internet and was able to find her a list of a couple of well-known celebrities who lived in Colorado. I am not sure if the information was helpful or not, but knowing that I was someone she could come to for information was satisfying to me.
When looking at our PR Admin class, I feel like we have good examples of all three types of people. I believe that if we can come together and put all of our skills, information, and contacts to good use, we can make the Athletic Auction a success. I believe that one thing that can be very influential in “tipping” the Auction is spreading the word around the community. Word of mouth is a very powerful tool in getting something to tip. I feel that many people who live in Milledgeville and are prime people to buy tickets may not know about it. I think that if we use our connections and get the word out about the auction, by having press releases in the local newspapers, radio ads, even television spots as well, I think we can get people to come. I think that we also need to find some simple way to make it appealing and sticky to those around Milledgeville. Since college students are not necessarily our main target audience, this might take some thinking.
As for how this all applies to using social media, I am not quite sure if I have figured this out yet. Since I have gotten an account on Twitter, I have heard so much about it on the Internet, television newscasts such as The Today Show, and newspapers. I feel like many more people of all ages, races, and professions are jumping on the Twitter bandwagon in the past couple of months. We may just be on the verge of a tipping point of how we use social media to get breaking up to the minute news!
