Tipping point

“Mavens are people who have a strong compulsion to help other consumers by helping them make informed decisions.” In other words, mavens are the people who enjoy being the insider of the topic, and providing what they think is useful information to their peers. Think of the bloggers from my fashion club. They keep a close eye on the latest fashion trends, and timely inform others about these news or near-term predictions. Mavens are assisted by social media in a variety of ways. First, social media allows mavens to collect and disburse information across a range of people that they may not have reached before. With mavens collecting hundreds, if not thousands of people across sites like Facebook and Twitter, a single post that once could only reach a few people can now reach across the world.

While a single maven can push and influence how people feel about a brand using social media, other mavens can perpetuate the cycle – either positive or negative – by either “liking” the status on Facebook, or “retweeting” the idea on Twitter. Other sites, such as Digg or Reddit, allow users to upvote or downvote ideas and posts, which further perpetuates the idea.

It appears to me that these mavens usually talk about topics that everyone cares about. A hot topic plus the influencers such as connectors, mavens, and salesmen help to boil the topic to its tipping point. Look at most hot videos that have gone viral recently, I found a similar trend: they are either about ridiculously funny things, or about pretty girls, babies, or pets. These topics ring the bells in many people’s head, and that’s why these topics attract many mavens to advocate for them. If I am a florist and I only advocate a specific flower in its scientific name, which no one understands, then no matter how I (one maven) scream about the topic, it won’t go very far.