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...The fundamental problem with influencer marketing is not that some people aren’t more influential than others, but that there is little, if any, evidence that influencer strategies—other than celebrity endorsement—are viable.  Yet all is not lost.  There is a way to consistently increase the likelihood of viral chains.

In 2001, Jonah Peretti had an e-mail exchange with Nike that went viral on the Web.  He was fascinated and, a year later, he met Duncan Watts at a conference.  The two struck up a friendship and then a collaboration. They did a number of projects together that had promising results, which they published in Harvard Business Review.

Their approach, which they called big seed marketing, does not rely on identifying a small number of special people, but rather on harnessing the power of a large number of ordinary people.  By reaching a mass audience, and encouraging them to share, you increase the likelihood that a viral chain emerges and, even if it doesn’t, you still improve performance.Peretti went on to co-found Huffington Post, which was sold to AOL for $315 million in 2011.  His second company, Buzzfeed, is now valued at $850 million.  In his extended interview with Felix Salmon, he credits not influentials, but “a constellation of connected things” for making his articles go viral so consistently.

So if you want things to spread, forget about special people with “rare qualities.”  Be interesting, reach as many people as you can and encourage them to share....