How To Get People Talking About Your Product So Much It Feels Illegal
If you’re as curious as me, you’ve probably wondered why some founders can quietly drop a new feature on a Tuesday, and by Wednesday, users are already making viral content about it.
Meanwhile, other founders can create a huge launch, get everyone talking for a few days, and then… nothing.
If you have a competitor doing the first thing, you might even start wondering if they’re doing something you don’t know about.
I wouldn’t blame you.
It’s human nature to call something “luck” when we can’t explain why it happened.
But there’s actually a science behind why people voluntarily share things.
And I’ll get into that in a bit.
First, there’s something I want to clear up.
Most of the advice on getting users to promote your product is completely unhelpful.
You’ll often hear:
“Build a great product and people will tell their friends.”
Which is true in the same way that “eat well and exercise” is good health advice.
It’s not wrong.
It’s just not very useful.
There are plenty of great products that people genuinely love using but never feel compelled to talk about.
So what makes the difference?
Why do some products seem to give people a reason to bring them up in conversations, show them to friends, or create something around them?
That’s what I wanted to understand.
So whether you’re still building your startup, preparing for a launch, or you’ve already been a founder for a while and want to build something that lasts, I want to show you six mechanisms behind why people voluntarily talk about, share, and bring up certain products.
These mechanisms come from the psychology of sharing, but we’ll look at them through the lens of actual products and the features they use.
This is going to be comprehensive.
It isn’t one of those articles you skim, steal three ideas from, and forget about tomorrow.
You’ll probably want to bookmark this, take some notes, and set aside some time to think through your own product.
Because once you see these patterns, you start noticing them everywhere — in products that have been around for years and in companies that are growing right now.
And at the end, I’ll give you a framework you can use to look at your own product and figure out where these mechanisms could fit.
Ready?
Let’s begin.
1. People won't care if there is nothing in it for them (WIIFM).
When founders want their users to promote their product, the first thing they usually think about is incentives. Give them a referral commission. Give them free credits. Give them a discount. Or, if you have the budget, pay UGC creators to make content about your product. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these things. The question is, when you look at companies that have grown largely through word of mouth, how often is an extrinsic reward the main reason people keep talking about them?
I started thinking about this when I was getting into online marketing. One of the products I came across was GrooveFunnels, and at the time, it was hard to miss. Their affiliate program was extremely aggressive, with 40% commissions, additional rewards for second-tier referrals, and even 100% deals for some major partners. That gave people a very strong reason to promote the product, and for a while, GrooveFunnels became one of the biggest names competing with ClickFunnels. But eventually, the excitement around it seemed to fade (the incentives stopped being enough to keep the conversation going), and I found myself going back to ClickFunnels.
What made that interesting to me was that, ClickFunnels wasn't even giving everyone the same kind of incentive to talk about it. Yet people were constantly teaching it, building businesses around it, creating content about it, and recommending it to other marketers. There was clearly another reason people wanted to associate themselves with the product.
Think about why someone buys an expensive car and then makes sure people know they own it. The car gets them from one place to another, but that's not the whole value. It can also make them look successful, wealthy, stylish, or like they have finally “made it.” The same thing happens with products. People don't only care about what a product does for them. They also care about what using it says about them.
This is what Jonah Berger describes as social currency. Give someone early access and they get to be the person who discovered it first. Give them a certification and they can signal expertise. Give them a public profile, achievement, ranking, or a result they are proud of, and you've given them something they may actually want other people to see.
You can see versions of this in products everywhere: premium or verified badges, public achievements, leaderboards, personalized reports, certifications, exclusive access, creator profiles, and even outputs that make the user look unusually good at what they do. There are many more, but you don't need to build all of them. The point is to find the few that naturally fit your product and give your users something they value beyond the product itself.
Because when the product gives people something to gain socially, you don't have to keep asking them to promote it.
They already have a reason to bring it up.
2. The best product in the world is useless if nobody remembers it when it matters.
Duolingo is a good example of this.
According to Duolingo, around 80% of its users were being acquired organically as of early 2023, through things like social media and word of mouth. That doesn't mean everything about Duolingo was responsible for that growth. The product is free, the app is gamified, the mascot is recognizable, and the company has built a huge presence online. There are a lot of things we could point to.
But one of the things Duolingo got very good at was making itself hard to forget.
Think about the way Duo shows up in your phone.
Instead of sending you another boring notification saying, “Don't forget to practice your Spanish,” Duolingo turned the notification into a character. Duo could sound like an overbearing parent, a disappointed friend, or that person who really wants you to finish what you started.
People started taking screenshots of these notifications and sharing them.
The notification itself became content.
And that's a very different kind of growth mechanism.
The goal wasn't simply to remind someone that Duolingo existed. It was to create an association so recognizable that seeing the notification, the green owl, or even the idea of missing a lesson could bring Duolingo to mind.
This is what Jonah Berger means by triggers.
Something becomes easier to talk about when something in your environment keeps bringing it back to the front of your mind. If something is top of mind, it is much more likely to become tip of tongue.
This is why you can have a genuinely great product that nobody talks about. People might love using it, but if nothing in their everyday environment reminds them of it, the product disappears from the conversation as soon as they close the app.
And the opposite can happen too.
A product doesn't necessarily have to be the best product in its category to become the one everyone is talking about. Sometimes it simply has a stronger association. A particular sound, character, situation, person, event, habit, or even a recurring joke can keep pulling the product back into people's minds.
Think about how brands attach themselves to things that already happen in people's lives. Nike and basketball. Red Bull and extreme sports. A product can become mentally connected to a situation long before someone actually needs it.
For SaaS products, this can be much simpler.
A tool can show up every morning through a calendar digest. An integration can put it inside the software your team already uses. A browser extension, like grammarly can appear exactly when you're doing the task it helps with. A notification can remind you at the moment a problem occurs.
These things don't necessarily make people share the product.
They make people remember it.
And that's important because you can't talk about something you don't think about.
You don't need to manufacture a trigger around every part of your product either. The better question is: what do you want people to associate your product with, and what will keep activating that association?
Once you figure that out, you can start looking for the places where your product can naturally show up again and again.
Because sometimes the difference between a product people love and a product people talk about isn't how good the product is.
It's whether they remember it when the right moment comes.
If you've found this useful so far, take a moment to follow me
I'm going to keep writing about content, marketing, distribution, and the things I find interesting while figuring out how products actually grow.
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3. If it doesn't move people, it usually doesn't move very far.
Think about the last time a piece of software made you feel something.
Not because it solved a problem. Not because it had another feature you needed. I mean something small that made you smile, surprised you, made you feel accomplished, or even gave you a little sense of relief.
That matters more than it seems.
A lot of software is designed to be useful and nothing more. You open it, do what you came to do, close it, and move on. There is nothing wrong with that. But when an experience gives you an emotion worth passing on, the product has a much better chance of leaving the screen and entering a conversation.
Asana does something as simple as this when you complete a task. Every now and then, a unicorn, narwhal, yeti, or another animation flies across the screen. It doesn't make the task easier to complete. It doesn't improve your project management. It just makes checking something off feel a little more enjoyable.
And that small moment changes the experience.
The same thing happens when a product does something that feels almost magical. You click one button and a complicated task is suddenly done. You get a result you weren't expecting. You hit a milestone and the product celebrates with you. You see something you created come to life.
These moments create emotions like delight, surprise, excitement, pride, curiosity, or relief. And according to researches, high-arousal emotions are particularly important because when people care about something, they're more likely to share it.
The important part isn't to add random animations or AI magic buttons just because another company has them. It's to find the moments in your product where something ordinary can become memorable.
Maybe it's the moment someone finishes something they've been working on. Maybe it's their first result. Maybe it's reaching a milestone, discovering something unexpected, or finally solving a problem that has been frustrating them.
There are plenty of ways to create that feeling, but you don't need all of them.
You just need to give people a few moments where using your product feels like more than completing a task.
Because people don't only remember what a product does.
They remember how it made them feel.
4. Invisible behavior is almost impossible to imitate.
When founders think about getting people to talk about their product, they usually think about what they can say about it themselves. Testimonials, reviews, case studies, maybe a few influencers saying how good it is.
But there is a simpler reason people trust something: they can see other people using it.
Think about how you make decisions in everyday life. If you see a lot of people using a particular phone, wearing a particular shoe, or eating at a particular restaurant, you don't need the company to convince you that the thing is worth trying. The people using it have already given you a little bit of validation.
This is why public behavior matters.
If nobody can see what your users are doing with your product, there is very little for anyone else to imitate. But when the behavior is visible, it becomes easier for another person to think, “Oh, people like me are using this. Maybe I should try it too.”
And this is where I think a lot of founders miss an opportunity.
You don't necessarily need thousands of people talking about your product on day one. Sometimes you need to deliberately create the first few visible examples. Get early users to actually use the product, document what they did with it, share the result, leave an honest review, participate in a challenge, or show what they built. The point isn't to manufacture fake popularity. It's to make genuine product usage visible enough for other people to see what is possible.
Then you can build that visibility into the product itself.
Loom does this naturally. When you send someone a Loom video, the recipient doesn't just receive a link. They experience the product through Loom's interface. Figma files can be shared with people who don't use Figma yet. Notion pages can be made public. Typeform forms can carry the product's branding. A free product can put its name directly into something the user is already sending to someone else.
Now the user isn't saying, “Go check out this company.”
They're simply using the product.
And someone else discovers it because of that use.
The same principle applies to testimonials, public profiles, community galleries, leaderboards, competitions, challenges, visible achievements, and even product comparisons. If people can see the behavior, the result, or the people already using the product, you've made it easier for the next person to imagine themselves doing the same thing.
There are a lot of ways to make usage public, but you don't need to use all of them. The important question is: what part of using your product could other people see, and would seeing it make them want to participate?
Because social proof doesn't always have to come from someone telling you that a product is good.
Sometimes you just need to see that other people are already using it.
5. Nobody wants to be the person who keeps useful information to themselves.
There is a simple reason people send their friends a useful tool, forward a good article, or show a colleague a shortcut they just discovered.
They think the other person will get something out of it.
By the way, if you think I've delivered on the value I promised so far, use this opportunity to share this article with someone who'd find it useful.
Dropbox understood this very well.
When Dropbox introduced its referral program, users could invite other people and receive more storage when they did. But the interesting part wasn't just the extra storage. The person being invited was getting something useful too: more storage for a product they might already need.
That makes the referral feel less like an advertisement and more like a recommendation.
You're not telling your friend, “Go sign up for this company so I can get a reward.”
You're more likely thinking, “You use Dropbox too. You should get this.”
And that distinction matters.
This is described as Practical Value: people share things that can save someone time, money, effort, or solve a problem for them. We like being useful to other people, and sharing something genuinely helpful is an easy way to do that.
This is also why products like Notion can spread through templates.
Someone builds a project tracker, content calendar, CRM, study planner, or some other useful workflow. Instead of keeping it inside their own workspace, they can turn it into something another person can use.
Now the product isn't asking the user to promote Notion.
The user has something useful to give someone else.
The same idea shows up in other parts of a product too. A free trial can let someone experience the value before paying. Free credits can help someone get started. A discount can make a purchase easier. A downloadable report can give someone something they can take straight to their boss. A guest seat can let a teammate participate without creating another billing problem.
There are plenty of mechanisms you could use here, but you don't need all of them. The better question is: what useful thing could your users give to someone else because they use your product?
Maybe it's more storage.
Maybe it's a template that saves someone three hours.
Maybe it's a free credit.
Maybe it's a report that makes a difficult decision easier.
Or maybe it's simply a way for someone else to experience the product without having to pay for it first.
Because when your product helps someone give value to another person, sharing stops feeling like promotion.
It just feels like being helpful.
6. No one wants to seem like a walking advertisement.
There is a reason people don't usually walk into a conversation and start listing the features of a software product they use.
It makes them sound like an advertisement.
But give them a story, and the situation changes.
People will tell you about the crazy thing their team pulled off. They'll explain how they went from struggling with something to figuring it out. They'll tell you how one person built something that normally takes a whole team. And somewhere inside that story, the product they used becomes part of it.
That's what makes stories so useful for word of mouth.
Think about Figma.
A designer doesn't necessarily tell a product manager, “You should use Figma because it has browser-based multiplayer collaboration.”
That's a product description.
Instead, they might send them a link to the actual project.
Now the product becomes part of a story: We're working on this together. Here's what I've designed. Can you leave your feedback?
The product isn't being advertised. It's helping the people involved move the story forward.
And this can get much bigger than collaboration.
One of the reasons stories around products like Lovable and Polsia are so easy to repeat is that the product sits inside a much bigger narrative. Someone described an idea and turned it into a working product. Or, in Polsia's case, the idea of one person being able to build and operate a company with AI.
You don't have to explain every feature to tell that story.
You just tell someone what happened.
That's what Jonah Berger is getting at with the Stories principle. People don't want to feel like they're walking advertisements for a company, but they'll happily talk about something when the product is part of a story worth telling.
And this gives founders another way to think about product design.
Instead of asking, “How can we get users to talk about our product?”
Ask:
“What story could our product help someone tell?”
Maybe it's the story of how a small team accomplished something that normally required a much larger one.
Maybe it's a before-and-after transformation.
Maybe it's something a customer built.
Maybe it's an unusual way your product works.
Maybe it's simply a result that makes someone say, “Wait, how did you do that?”
You can also build features around these stories. Before-and-after reports can help customers show a transformation. Public project pages can let people show what they've built. Version histories can make the journey visible. Community spaces can give users somewhere to share how they created something.
There are plenty of ways to do this, but the feature itself isn't the story.
The user's experience is.
Your product just needs to make that experience easier to create, document, and share.
And when you look across all six mechanisms we've covered, this is where the pieces start to come together.
Social currency gives someone a reason to associate themselves with the product.
Triggers keep the product in their mind.
Emotion gives them something to feel.
Public visibility gives other people something to see.
Practical value gives them something useful to pass on.
And stories give them something worth telling.
None of these are six separate growth hacks you need to bolt onto your product.
They're six different ways a product can move from one person's experience into someone else's world.
So the next question is more practical:
How do you actually use these six mechanisms when you're building your own product?
One more thing though before we proceed.
We had to leave a lot out of this article.
We researched dozens of examples across products like Dropbox, Figma, Notion, Loom, Calendly, Duolingo, Superhuman, n8n, Lovable, and others. There are a lot of interesting product decisions and distribution mechanisms hiding inside those examples that simply wouldn't fit here without turning this article into a book.
So I'm compiling the research into a bigger resource: the companies we studied, the features they use, the mechanisms behind them, and the breakdown of how each one creates opportunities for distribution.
We're also launching a newsletter around this kind of research and thinking.
If you'd like the full research when it's ready, comment “WORD OF MOUTH” and I'll send you the link to join the waitlist
At this point, you might be thinking, Okay, I understand why people talk about products. But what am I supposed to do with this information?
Because knowing that social currency exists isn't particularly useful if you close this article and still have no idea what to change in your product.
So let's make this practical.
I want you to be able to sit down with your product, go through these six mechanisms one by one, and come out with actual things you could test or build.
I've also turned this process into a STEPPS Product Blueprint — a simple checklist and workbook where you can work through the questions, write down your ideas, map the people involved, and decide what is actually worth building.
If you want a copy, comment “WORD OF MOUTH” and I'll send it to you.
You don't need to figure everything out from memory while reading this. You can use the workbook alongside the article and actually work through your own product.
So, let's do it.
Step 1: Start with the product, not the psychology.
Before you think about Social Currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical Value, or Stories, forget about all six for a moment.
First, make sure you understand what you're actually trying to distribute.
Take your product and finish this sentence:
Our product helps [specific user] achieve [meaningful outcome] better or faster than they otherwise could.
And don't make this vague.
“Helps businesses grow” isn't enough.
“Helps creators make content” isn't enough.
Who exactly?
And what are you helping them accomplish?
For example:
Our product helps independent creators turn their expertise into consistent content that generates qualified leads.
Now you have something to work with.
Because the goal of this exercise isn't to make your product “viral.”
It's to find ways that product-driven distribution can help the product accomplish what it already exists to accomplish.
That distinction will save you from building a lot of features that sound clever but don't actually matter to your users.
Once you know what the product is trying to do, you can start looking for opportunities.
Step 2: Look at the six opportunities.
Now go back through the six mechanisms.
But don't start by asking, “What feature should we add?”
Start with the question behind each mechanism.
Social Currency
What could using our product say about the person using it?
Triggers
What could make our product come to mind when the right situation happens?
Emotion
Where could using our product create a memorable feeling?
Public
What could other people see happening because someone uses our product?
Practical Value
What useful thing could our user give someone else?
Stories
What story could our product help someone tell?
Now spend some time on each one.
You might immediately see something.
Maybe your users already create impressive work, but there is nowhere for them to show it.
Maybe they constantly solve a problem for their friends or colleagues, but your product doesn't make that easy to pass along.
Maybe there is a recurring moment in their workflow where your product could naturally appear.
Maybe there is a result people are already proud of, but you haven't given them a good way to share it.
Write those things down.
Don't build anything yet.
You're looking for opportunities.
Step 3: Turn the opportunity into a behavior.
This is where I think the exercise gets much more useful.
Once you've found an opportunity, ask:
What do I actually want the user to do?
Not “what feature do I want?”
What behavior?
Maybe you want them to show something they've accomplished.
Maybe you want them to invite a teammate.
Maybe you want them to give someone else a useful resource.
Maybe you want them to publish something they've created.
Maybe you want them to bring another person into the workflow.
Once you know the behavior, work backwards.
What could we build that makes this behavior natural?
Now you can start thinking about features.
Maybe it's a template.
Maybe it's a public page.
Maybe it's an integration.
Maybe it's a shareable report.
Maybe it's a badge.
Maybe it's a guest account.
Maybe it's something completely different.
The feature is just the vehicle.
The behavior is what you're actually designing for.
And this is important because the same feature can produce completely different outcomes depending on the behavior behind it.
A leaderboard could make people compete.
It could make people show off.
It could make people come back more often.
Or it could do absolutely nothing.
The feature itself doesn't create the outcome.
The behavior you're designing around does.
Step 4: Follow the product beyond the user.
Now take the behavior you've designed and keep following it.
Ask:
Who encounters this next?
This is the part that turns a product feature into a distribution mechanism.
Take Dropbox.
A user gets more storage by inviting someone.
So don't stop at:
“Referral program.”
Follow the chain.
User
wants more storage.
↓
Action
invites someone.
↓
Recipient
gets value from joining Dropbox.
↓
Recipient value
more storage.
↓
Next action
they start using Dropbox.
Now you have another person inside the product.
The same thing happens with Loom.
Someone records a video.
They send it to a colleague.
The colleague doesn't just hear about Loom.
They experience Loom by watching the video.
Calendly works in a similar way.
A user sends a scheduling link.
The recipient interacts with Calendly to book the meeting.
Figma lets a designer bring another person into the actual work.
Notion lets someone share a template that another person can duplicate.
In each case, the product action creates another interaction with another person.
So when you come up with your own feature, map this out:
User → Recipient → Recipient Value → Next Action
Then ask yourself:
Who encounters this?
Why would they care?
What do they get from it?
What do they do next?
And most importantly:
Does what they do next create another opportunity for the product?
If the answer is yes, you're getting closer to a real distribution mechanism.
Step 5: Put the mechanisms together.
Once you've gone through all six, don't leave your ideas sitting in six separate boxes.
Look at them together.
You might find that one behavior naturally creates another.
A user creates a useful template.
They make it public.
Someone discovers it.
The creator gets recognition.
The new user gets a good result.
They create something of their own.
And now they have a reason to share it too.
That's much more interesting than six disconnected features.
You might end up with something like:
Practical Value → Public → Social Currency → Trigger → Emotion → Story → New User
But don't try to force that exact sequence into your product.
You don't need all six.
And you definitely don't need to build six separate features.
Find the loop that already wants to exist.
Maybe your product has a naturally strong Public + Practical Value loop.
Maybe it's Stories + Social Currency.
Maybe it's Trigger + Emotion.
The framework is there to help you see the opportunity, not to give you six boxes you have to check.
Step 6: Decide what is actually worth building.
By now, you should have a handful of ideas.
This is where you need to resist the temptation to build everything.
Take each idea and ask two questions:
How much could this matter if it works?
And:
How difficult would it be to build and test?
That's enough to put your ideas into four groups.
Build now
High potential and relatively easy to test.
Investigate
Potentially valuable, but you need more evidence before building.
Later
Interesting, but not important enough right now.
Drop
Doesn't fit your product naturally.
The goal isn't to leave this exercise with twenty new features.
You should ideally leave with one or two things you genuinely want to test.
Step 7: Build it, then see what actually happens.
This last part is easy to overlook.
You don't know whether a mechanism works because you built the feature.
You know because people behaved differently.
So decide what you're going to measure.
If you built something Public, maybe you're watching public shares, page visits, or invitations.
If you built something around Practical Value, maybe you're looking at template shares, duplications, or recipient activation.
If you built a Trigger, maybe you're looking at whether the behavior you care about increases when people encounter that trigger.
The metric should follow the behavior.
And when you have enough data, ask:
Did this actually change the behavior we designed for?
If it did, you have something worth developing further.
If it didn't, don't immediately conclude that the entire idea was bad.
Maybe the opportunity wasn't strong.
Maybe people didn't want to do the behavior.
Maybe the feature made it too difficult.
Maybe the recipient didn't get enough value.
Now you know what to investigate next.
That's the part I like most about this framework.
You're not trying to guess the one magical feature that will make everyone talk about your product.
You're building a hypothesis, putting it into the product, watching what people actually do, and improving from there.
And that's really what the six mechanisms are for.
They're not six growth hacks.
They're six different ways of asking:
“Why would a person carry this product beyond their own experience?”
Maybe it makes them look good.
Maybe something in their environment reminds them of it.
Maybe the product makes them feel something.
Maybe other people can see what they're doing.
Maybe it gives them something useful to pass on.
Maybe it gives them a story worth telling.
The best opportunities are usually the ones that already fit the way people naturally use your product.
You just have to notice them.
And once you start looking at products this way, you stop asking:
“How do I get my users to promote my product?”
You start asking a much more useful question:
“What could I build that gives people a reason to bring my product into someone else's world?”
That's where product-driven distribution starts to become part of the product itself.
Note: This article was researched, structured, and developed by us. We used AI as a writing and editing assistant to help clean up some of our wording, organize ideas, and make the final piece easier to read. The research, examples, observations, and thinking behind the article are ours.