Whenever I watch any piece of content go viral out of nowhere, the question I keep asking is: why? Why not have dozens of other posts on the same topic published at the same time by creators with a similar audience?
The answer, more than likely, is not about the algorithm. It’s about people. Specifically, it is about which people fueled it – and whether those people have the right combination of accessibility, credibility and genuine investment in sharing good ideas.
Malcolm Gladwell explored this in his 2000 book The turning pointand his framework around connectors and mavens at the tipping point remains one of the most useful lenses a blogger or content creator can apply to how they think about the quiet business of building growth, audiences, and online relationships.
The post is more relatable than it seems
On the surface, the writing feels lonely. You sit with your thoughts, searching for the right words, trying to find a structure that says the right thing. No one can do this part for you.
But blogging has always had a second life – a social life. Comments, replies, DMs, the newsletter, links from other people’s posts bring you a readership you would never have reached otherwise. Each post is also a thread in a larger web of relationships.
Here is the original version of this article written by Liz Strauss in 2007. He described blogging as “the pinnacle of communication”—more immediate, more interactive, and more relational than anything that had come before. That instinct was right. What’s worth revisiting now is how relevant the basic framework he refers to is still relevant, and what it tells us about creators whose ideas actually travel.
What exactly are binders and maven
Gladwell’s Minority Law describes three types of people who promote the spread of ideas. Two of them are especially relevant to anyone building an audience through writing.
Connectors are people with unusually large and diverse social networks. Not only do they know many people, but they know people from different worlds. In the context of a blog, a connector is a writer who appears everywhere: in communities, on podcasts, who generously links to other people’s work, who makes entries. Their strength is not in the depth of any relationship, but in the breadth of coverage in different circles.
Mavens are information experts — people others trust to know what’s worth reading, what tool is worth using, and whether their newsletter is really good. Mavens are driven not only by knowledge, but by a desire to share it. The classic maven-blogger writes an in-depth comparison post, an honest long-term review, an “I actually use” guide deeply trusted by his followers.
The third type – sellers – persuasive. Their recommendations seem to carry a magnetism that goes beyond logic. Chances are you’ve come across a few in your niche.
What Liz Strauss noticed in 2007 was that the affiliate bloggers she knew embodied the roles of both unifier and maven at the same time. This observation is still ongoing. The bloggers and content creators who build the most sustainable audiences are generous with information and generous with communication. They close. They recommend. They introduce people to each other. And their readers trust them and spread their work over time.
The framework is now more relevant – and more complex
Gladwell himself returned to these ideas in 2024 Revenge of the Tipping Pointexploring the dark dimensions of social contagion. In the original book, connectors, mavens, and salespeople were mostly cast in a positive light—people who help good ideas reach the people who need them. The sequel asks more difficult questions about what happens when the same mechanisms are used to spread harm.
For content creators, this complicates the picture in a useful way. The same relational dynamics that helped a well-thought-out blog post reach thousands of readers in 2007 are now deployed on platforms that actively engineer virality—often at the expense of nuance, depth, and credibility.
One of the main criticisms of influencer culture is that follower count does not cleanly correlate with connector or maven status. A creator with millions of followers can reach a massive audience without really knowing them or being trusted by them like a true maven. The Georgetown School of Continuing Studies made this very point in their analysis of influencer marketing: having a large audience and being a true connector or maven are not the same thing.
What this means for how you set up your blog
The practical result is this: the reach of your content is not evenly distributed among your audience. Some readers deserve hundreds of other readers—not because of their audience, but because of the role they play in their community.
The maven in your audience writes a recommendation in a private Slack group of forty people who are your ideal readers. The linker shares your post in three different communities that you could never reach on your own. These moments are not clearly visible in your analytics. But they are the engine of growth enhancement.
This suggests a few things worth noting.
First, create content that earns the trust of the mavens in your readership. These are readers with high standards – they’ll quit if your work is written too thinly, too promotionally, or too clearly for search engines, rather than for humans. Maven-friendly content has real content. Takes a position. This gives the data professionals in your audience something to pass along with credibility.
Second, make your work easy for connectors to share. It’s not just about share buttons – it’s about giving your blog a clear enough identity that a connector can describe it in one sentence. If recommending you requires a three-sentence explanation, friction will stop them.
Third, think of your audience as a set of roles, not just a number of employees. The question is not just “how many people are reading this?” not. “Who is reading this and where will it take them next?”
The blog’s contact information has not changed
What Liz Strauss realized in 2007—that blogging was primarily a means of communication, not just publishing—is still true. Platforms have changed. The noise has increased dramatically. The dark side of the virus outbreak is harder to ignore now. But the underlying dynamic is the same.
Bloggers and creators who build something sustainable are still, at heart, joiners and mavens. They gather insightful information and share it generously. They connect people across communities. They write not just to publish, but to be useful—to give their readers something worth passing on.
This is a long way of thinking about content. But in a landscape where attention is everywhere and trust is low, it may be the most reliable strategy available.
