Contagious

---
name: contagious
description: 'Engineer word-of-mouth and virality using the STEPPS framework (Social Currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical Value, Stories). Use when the user mentions "go viral", "word of mouth", "shareable content", "social currency", "why people share", "referral program", "nobody is sharing it", or "make this spread". Also trigger when designing shareable features, crafting social campaigns, or building products that spread through peer recommendation. Covers environmental triggers and high-arousal emotional content. For sticky messaging, see made-to-stick. For persuasion tactics, see influence-psychology.'
license: MIT
metadata:
  author: wondelai
  version: "1.4.0"
---

# Word-of-Mouth & Virality Framework

A framework for engineering word-of-mouth and making products, ideas, and content contagious, based on Jonah Berger's research into why things catch on. Use it to design shareability into products, campaigns, and content instead of hoping for luck.

## Core Principle

**Virality is not born — it is engineered.** Products spread because they were designed — consciously or not — to be shared. Only 7% of word-of-mouth happens online; the other 93% happens in offline conversations, so virality is about the psychology of sharing, not social media mechanics. Those psychological patterns are predictable and can be engineered into anything using the STEPPS framework.

See: [references/word-of-mouth.md](references/word-of-mouth.md) when the brief over-indexes on social media — it makes the offline-vs-online case, lists conversation triggers, and gives a WOM measurement/audit method.

## Scoring

**Goal: 10/10.** Score each of the six STEPPS drivers (the six Quick Diagnostic rows) — **0** absent, **1** present but weak, **2** strong and deliberate — for a raw 0-12, then map: 11-12 -> 10, 9-10 -> 8-9, 6-8 -> 6-7, 3-5 -> 4-5, 0-2 -> <=3. Bands:
- **9-10** — three or more drivers at strength 2, at least one of them Public or Social Currency (the self-propagating ones), and the brand survives the Trojan Horse test.
- **6-8** — two drivers genuinely strong, but spread still leans on paid reach or product quality alone.
- **<=5** — at most one weak driver; sharing is incidental, not engineered.… install to load the full skill