I often advise companies to create a unique and compelling information resource as a component in their influencer marketing program. Here’s a fine example: PricewaterhouseCoopers’ work for the World Economic Forum and Davos 10 — the PwC KnowledgeConcierge.

The PwC KnowledgeConcierge pulls together diverse facts and sources to convey a 360 degree view of the major topics being discussed at Davos 10.

It’s built on “FastFacts” — individual slides, each devoted to one aspect of a topic. Most are charts or other visuals. The FastFacts are grouped together, and this lets you consider the “whole” by looking at the “parts”.

The sets of charts don’t have an extra narrative nor do they need one: the slide titles and the charts themselves tell the story.  And they do it in a compelling way.

PwC is able to present this range of facts because they keep an open mind about sourcing the FastFacts. Look closely and you’ll see that PwC draws from myriad sources: research companies, media, corporations, governments, public-private collaboratives, academia and non-profits.

Moral of the story: We all have unprecedented access to information - you, me, our influencers.  If anything, we have access to too much information. You don’t need to create all the information you pass along to your influencers. You can be a value-added filter. Find the best information that’s out there and put it together in meaningful ways. You’ll still convey your point of view. You’ll just be using many voices to do it.

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How can industry analysts start relationships with analyst relations professionals? It’s a question posed every day by every analyst wanting to open doors at tech provider firms. Usually, the goal is sales, research or broadening a professional network. Often, analysts want to build rapport with AR pro’s for all 3 reasons. Two posts offer useful pointers on how to succeed:

SageCircle takes an industry insider view on the sales and research front with today’s post, How can small analyst firms get the attention of analyst relations? [Analyst Question] (disclosure: Tekrati is listed as a key resource)

Mashable offers sound advice on the professional networking front with today’s post, 7 Lessons for Better Networking with Social Media

Having influence in some circles does not automatically open doors in others. That applies equally whether you work at Gartner or as a sole proprietor.

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Solid research is the only way to cut through the chatter about identifying and prioritizing influencers for word-of-mouth marketing and other forms of influencer marketing. Mike Gotta (Burton Group / Gartner ) points out a just such a study, from the pharma industry. I like this study because it focuses on finding the hidden opinion leaders who drive the first wave of word-of-mouth product referrals.

The study identifies two distinct types of opinion leaders among the target physicians: those who are trusted and respected by peers (called sociometric leaders) and those physicians who think of themselves as well connected and influential (called self-reported opinion leaders).

The opinion leaders identified by their peers are not the traditional targets pursued by marketers. If anything, they contradict current marketing wisdom about influencers and influentials. They are not overtly well connected, outgoing or high profile in terms of being published or public speakers.

Three nuggets to think about:

The study finds little overlap between the two types of influencers. Physicians fell into one group or the other.

The under-the-radar opinion leaders are quicker to use new product and more likely to influencer others to try it. This finding is based on matching network data with perscription records.

The under-the-radar sociometric opinion leaders are more interested in what their peers are doing, and are more open to word-of-mouth or social influence, than the self-reported opinion leaders.

Both types of opinion leaders play important roles in robust influencer marketing programs. One group is not better than the other; they’re just different kinds of people. The best course of action is to identify and address both types of opinion leaders. That means doing more research and more segmentation.

Useful links:
Summary at Knowledge@Wharton (hat tip to Mike Gotta)

Opinion Leadership and Social Contagion in New Product Diffusion - by Raghuram Iyengar, Christophe Van den Bulte, and Thomas Valente, 2008 [08-120]

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One of my activities for 2010 is helping get the word out on the CIO Summit of America in New York and the full 2010 CIO Leadership series. I’m supporting this event series because I believe it offers compelling value as part of a tech company’s influencer relations agenda.

Peer-to-peer events are growing more important. Research keeps telling us that peers and colleagues have the greatest influence on enterprise IT decision makers. HMG Strategy’s CIO Leadership series recognizes this. Each event brings together IT leaders within a region for a day of exchanging, sharing and learning from each other.

The events at a glance:

• Market focus: regional to local attendees, enabling alignment with sales territories
• Short: 1-day event, appealing to busy IT decision makers
• Agenda: timely themes tailored directly by the speakers and attendees in the room
• Experts/influencers: CIOs, COOs, CxOs, IT directors and VPs share their strategies, experiences and lessons learned; pundits are scarce onstage and off
• Caliber of participants: Generally these CIO Leadership events draw an impressive group of speakers and participating attendees; in some cities, the summits are conducted in partnership with IT associations
• History: while still a young endeavor, there’s now an established track record of events for attendee/sponsor assessment

The 2010 schedule is posted at the HMG Strategy website. It begins with New York and San Francisco in February.

As IT peer level events go, the CIO Leadership series puts many of the right pieces together. Consider adding it to a line-up of industry conferences, analyst events, professional association events, meetups and unconferences. Please let them know you read about it here.

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The SAP Influencer Summit dominated tech media and Twitter backchannel conversations about SAP all week. The event offers a good example of real time influencer relations management. If you’re planning an influencer summit for 2010, consider these 3 points:

1. Open discourse. Several tech providers nixed live blogging and live micro-blogging (Twitter) during their influencer events this year. SAP set an important precedent by keeping all social media channels open and participating in conversations in real time. Live sessions were blogged, reported, tweeted and debated by people in attendance and by virtual attendees around the world. Follow SAP’s example: Limit NDAs to the situations where they make sense, such as the strategy development work leading up to an event like this. When the content doesn’t mandate an NDA, don’t curb use of social media.

2. Employee engagement. Many SAP employees expanded on speaker and audience comments via Twitter. Creating a wider circle of employee commentators makes perfect sense. And you know what? The press, analysts and consultants were likely to contact their “unofficial” employee sources anyway. It’s a much better idea to involve more employees by design, than to pretend that exchanges are limited to the featured spokespeople and handlers in the room.

3. Diverse attendees. SAP invited a diverse group of influencers to participate. Among tech industry influencers, big brand analysts and media dialogued side by side with solo opinion leaders and every size in between as well as customers and bloggers. Gathering diverse opinion leaders together to share the same information at the same time at a flagship event is smart on several counts. One, it’s efficient. Two, it sets up diverse, multiple touch points with marketplaces. It also helps build enough momentum to flow directly to offline conversations. In other words, no single point of failure and lot of juice.

For more on the SAP Influencer Summit, check out:

• Timo Elliott, an evangelist for SAP. He offers light commentary on what was going on behind the scenes here.  He also links to a PDF document of Twitter feed from #sapsummit.
• Jonathan Becher, SVP marketing at SAP and official SAP blogger for the event, posted here.
• R Ray Wang, an analyst with Altimeter Group, offers one analyst’s summary of the event themes and SAP’s performance here.

Update December 14th: Adding 2 more links to analyst reactions. Please feel free to add more attendee links in the comments. - B

• Jon Reed, a fellow with PAC , weighs in on the experience and resulting expectations among attendees here
• James Governor, analyst with RedMonk, gives a candid analyst viewpoint that was widely accepted among other analysts here

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Influencer marketing tools are getting a new gear and it’s a good one. Up until recently, influencer relationship management (IRM) tools offered 3 speeds: identifying, monitoring and measuring influencers. That’s good, but not good enough. Corporate marketing teams focused on social media need to find ways to scale their influencer programs without sacrificing micro-segmentation and personalization. That kind of scalability is just what this new gear — call it influencer activation or participation or engagement — delivers.

Ogilvy’s Insider Circle(TM) is the latest entrant in this evolving category. Per the Ogilvy announcement this week:

Insider Circle allows brands to build and scale relationships with key brand influencers – including influential bloggers, Twitter users, brand fans and loyal customers – and quantitatively measure the performance of social activation campaigns. Insider Circle, which is offered by brands on an invitation only basis, allows those brands to make exclusive, shareable content and offers available to a select group social media influencers in categories important to the brand.

This makes perfect sense, when you think about it. We’re accustomed to being able to email or phone influencers directly from our relationship management tools. The savvy providers are moving beyond the basics to help us deliver custom content and appropriate special offers to carefully selected social media influencers.

Revisit your wish list for influencer relations management tools. You might find that wishes are coming true.

Popularity: 6%

I’m pleased to find that a new study validates what I’ve been seeing in client projects and industry conversations: social media is taking on a larger role in business decision-making processes. Social media is enabling decision-makers to reach out to larger numbers of people (the size of their unique influencer ecosystems) and to tap into their influencers through online as well as offline channels. These are among the preliminary findings of a study conducted this summer under the umbrella of the Society of New Communications Research (SNCR). SNCR Research Fellows Don Bulmer, SAP, and Vanessa DiMauro, Leader Networks lead the research and analysis and have begun releasing preliminary findings. Their full report will be released in January.

On the business front, about 4 in 10 respondents incorporate social networks into 4 steps of their decision process:

• seeking peer referral
• reading blogs
• gathering opinions through an online network
• looking the company up on a social network

Other findings relative to social media and influence:

• Information obtained from offline networks still have highest levels of trust with slight advantage over online (offline: 92% - combined strongly/somewhat trust; online: 83% combined strongly/somewhat trust)
• Approximately three quarters of respondents rely on professional networks to support business decisions: 40% gather opinions via their online networks and 39% look up companies on their social networks.
• Reliance on web-based professional networks and online communities has increased significantly over the past 3 years for essentially all respondents

Don has shared one of the interview excerpts, and for me, this comment puts the study results into context:

“I find that I will network offline at events and meetings where I establish connection with many people and I use online tools to follow up and maintain connect. I may meet 20 or so people at an event and then immediately then put them into Plaxo or LinkedIn to keep and maintain connection. I try to maintain my status and activity regularly to keep engaged and keep people informed.”

The methodology for the “New Symbiosis of Professional Networks” study involved a mixed methods approach supported by quantitative data gathered via online survey of 356 professionals to understand their perceptions and experiences with social media in support of their decision-making. Select interviews of 12 professionals were also conducted using a semi-structured interview guide as part of the second phase of the study. All respondents were either the decision makers or influenced the decision process within their company or business unit, and company size ranged from less than 100 to over 50,000 full-time employees.

Find more at Don’s blog and Vanessa’s blog.

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Vendor-side influencer relations programs tend to focus on public relations, analyst relations and blogger relations. I’ve talked before (e.g. here and here) about the value of broadening these programs to include other types of influencers, such as the research leads at professional associations. Announcements today from CEA and ESA underscore why this makes so much sense.

The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) today debuts CEMarketMetrics.org, a enhanced version of its well known Market Activity Reports and Analysis (MARA) service. The service, available only to CEA members, tracks shipments of more than 50 CE products from the factory to U.S. consumer sales channels through weekly and monthly reports. Data is supplied directly to the CEA from the manufacturers. Members used it to measure market trends and compare their sales against industry performance.

Meanwhile, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) today releases results of its 2009 holiday shopping poll. Conducted by KRC Research, the market research covers consumer holiday spending plans relative to computer and video games. This is a timely poll from a proven source, presenting juicy data points to media and bloggers.

So what’s the take away? Why makes these kinds of associations so attractive as additions to influencer relations programs? Here’s how I look at it:

• Industry associations such as CEA and ESA are continuing to improve the extensive market research delivered to their members, and members can become involved in scoping and participating in these studies with their peers. Read between the lines: that means helping shape the focus and timing and therefore downstream findings of landmark studies.
• These groups are continually making better use of online and traditional media to promote their story lines, guest speakers and member sponsors.
• Lobbying and government relations outreach extends the groups’ influence across industry participants and across government and regulatory leadership. This can add additional touch points to most public affairs programs.
• Association-produced events extend influence to buyers, media and other interested publics.
• Most associations are already experimenting with social media and collaboration tools for stickier peer to peer networking.
• There is no question about the bias of these groups. They clearly represent their member interests. Plus, vendor involvement in major initiatives is usually spelled out. No wasting time investigating those points. Partner, counter, parry as appropriate.
• Managing relations with industry associations depends on many of the same skill sets used in successful PR and AR programs.

Popularity: 3%

Interested in working at an influencer marketing company? Good news - Influencer50 Inc. is hiring. The company is recruiting for a marketing manager to be based in the San Francisco office. They’re looking for an experienced marketing professional to manage one-to-one marketing outreach, influencer engagement programs for clients, and Influencer50’s online content. It’s a mid-senior level position suited for candidates with 6+ years’ experience in B2B marketing roles.

The position is listed exclusively on LinkedIn. Check it out and apply via LinkedIn.

If you work vendor-side, consider joining the “Influencer Marketing & Influencer Relations” group while you’re visiting LinkedIn.

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Influencer marketing is on a collision course with the US Federal Trade Commission and its new guidelines for endorsements and testimonials in advertising. The revised guides span consumer endorsements, expert endorsements, endorsement by organizations, and disclosure of material connections between advertisers and endorsers. The FTC has already said it expects the revised guidelines to affect most businesses that advertise in the US.

Don’t hit the snooze button on this because you think expert influencers such as industry analysts are beyond the scope of the revised guidelines. Recall the case of Microsoft, META Group and the UK Advertising Standards Authority. The ASA upheld complaints that a Microsoft print ad comparing Linux and Windows(R) costs was misleading. The heart of the ad was a META Group benchmark study. (The Inquirer, 25 Aug 2004)

Duncan and I have written about these guides a few times (here and here). We know the revised guidelines are coming, we just don’t know when. Many, including Ogilvy’s John Bell, expect the new guides to go into effect as early as next month. An FTC spokesman told me this morning that the effective date has not been set; the revisions are still in staff discussion. However, I tend to give John his due. Seems likely that an advertising powerhouse like Ogilvy has an ear or two placed close to the FTC staff discussions.

The revised FTC guides deserve close scrutiny. In short, transparency is no longer an option. You need to provide information about where you’ve seeded free products, services or other considerations in exchange for an endorsement. You may also need to provide evidence of the grounds for an endorsement, including repeatable results that back up claims.

What can you do?

• Team up with lawyers to understand the implications for endorsements and testimonials and to agree on how you will accommodate these guides in your best practices, approval processes and influencer relations.
• Agree on a simple rating system for determining the risks associated with endorsements and testimonials already in use. Come up with one or two criteria that determine each level of risk — high risk, moderate risk or low risk. Keep it simple.
• Review the endorsements and testimonials you’ve already released and rate the risk associated with each. Remember, the new guides will apply evenly to endorsements you initiate and to unprompted endorsements you pick up and use. You are accountable for claims made in both types of endorsements. If you use an endorsement, you’re accountable for it. Come up with an action plan as needed.
• Use your risk ratings to update your approval process for future endorsements and testimonials.

Useful information links:

Old FTC Guides Concerning Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising

Proposed revisions to the FTC Guides Concerning Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, published for public comment in November 2008 (this link opens a pdf)

Extension for submitting comments to the proposed revisions (this link opens a pdf)

FTC press release announcing the revisions, Nov 2008

Related posts at John Bell’s blog, Digital Influence Mapping Project

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