Established model

STEPPS

Jonah Berger · 2013

Also known as The six principles of contagiousness, Contagious

Six properties that make a person pass something on, written as things to build in rather than as an explanation afterwards.

Its place in the frameworkMarket Core›Content

What it does

It argues that what travels is not what is best but what carries something for the person doing the passing: status from being the one who knows it, a cue in ordinary life that brings it back to mind, feeling strong enough to move someone rather than merely please them, visibility that lets others copy the behaviour, usefulness worth forwarding, and a story the message can ride inside. The value is as a check applied before publishing rather than as a theory — each of the six names something concrete that can be designed into a piece instead of hoped for.

Reach for it when: When content is well made and read by nobody, and the question has become what would make one reader send it to another.
Where it stops: The evidence comes largely from things that did spread, which cannot show how much material had the same six properties and sank anyway. Word of mouth is also a modest share of most brands’ growth, and designing for shareability can quietly cost relevance to the people who were already going to buy.

Jonah Berger, Contagious: Why Things Catch On, Simon & Schuster, 2013.

Why it sits at Content

Everything the organisation publishes: what it is about, what shape it takes, what it costs to make, when it goes out, and how long it stays useful afterwards.

A model is only useful when you reach for it at the right moment. This one answers a question that arises here — so it is filed here, and nowhere else. These are the working areas it serves:

PillarsContent-strategy practice on thematic consistency, and the category-entry-point research on being brought to mind for something specific at the moment a need becomes live.
FormatsContent-audit practice, and the mapping of content to buying stage in demand-generation work.
ProductionFully loaded production costing, and throughput and work-in-progress logic applied to editorial work, where approval is usually the constraint.
The calendarAudience-habit research on the value of regularity, editorial rolling-horizon planning, and seasonality read from the audience’s calendar rather than the organisation’s.
Reuse and lifespanThe evergreen-against-topical distinction, and content-atomisation practice.

All of Content

What it touches elsewhere

Nothing in a business is decided on its own. A conclusion reached with this model at Content lands in these other cores, whether or not anyone follows it there.

Brand CoreThe verbal and visual systems govern how every piece is executed, and what the pillars may claim is set by the message architecture.
Customer JourneyA format’s job is defined by the stage it serves and the transition it is meant to cause.
Business CoreContent is made by people with finite capacity, and approval is a process step with a queue in front of it.
Time CoreThe publishing rhythm sits inside the organisation’s wider year and competes with it for the same weeks.

Filed at the same place

These answer questions that arise at Content too. Where they disagree with this one, the disagreement is the useful part.

The content marketing matrixContent placed by what it is for — to entertain, inspire, educate or convince — and how close the reader is to buying.
The 70:20:10 content mixSeventy per cent of effort on the dependable, twenty on what is promising, ten on what might not work at all.

Elsewhere in Market Core

These are other people’s models, named here so you can go to the source and use them properly. The Omnigoal is not affiliated with their authors and is not endorsed by them; nothing of theirs is reproduced here — no canvas, no diagram, no wording. Each is described in our own words, with the originator credited, because the framework is a place to put thinking, not a replacement for the people who did it. Model names and trademarks belong to their respective owners and are used here only to refer to the work itself.

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