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This is an excerpt from What Matters Now — 1%, by Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell.

Two tech executives with no food experience and no marketing budget launch a product called Bacon Salt.

Next, they search for people on social networking sites who profess a love for bacon, then friend them. Among a small percentage of those people, enthusiasum begins to spread about Bacon Salt. What began as a tribe quickly multiplies into 37,000 fans on Facebook and MySpace.

Months later, the buzz spills over into newspaper articles, TV interviews and the holy grail of PR, an appearance on Oprah. Two guys who knew nothing about the food business and had no marketing budget now had a certifiable cult hit. Inspired, they create several other bacon-flavored products. It’s the birth of a brand.

Their success began with a small – very small – group of self-identified fans of a category. Even if social networks have millions of members, it will never translate into millions of buzz-spreaders. The Bacon Salt story illustrates that it’s usually a small percentage of the tribe within the larger tribe who spread the word—usually about 1 percent. They are the One Percenters.

The One Percenters are not the usual suspects of name-brand tech bloggers, mommy bloggers and or business bloggers. The One Percenters are often hidden in the crevices of niches, yet they are the roots of word of mouth.

This year, your job is to find them and attract them. Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell are the authors of the books Citizen Marketers and Creating Customer Evangelists. They blog at Church of the Customer.