Influencer marketing is progressing from too much hype and trial-by-fire programs to sensible strategies and accepted best practices. There’s no better time than today to re-fresh your thinking about influence — what it is, who has it, what roles it can play in business. I’ll be discussing these topics at next week’s Bay Area Executives Meetup in Mountain View, CA, along with moderator R Ray Wang of Altimeter Group and my co-panelists Michael Brito of Edelman Digital, Ali McCourt of Intuit and Tony Welch of HP. Special thanks to Tatyana Kanzavel for organizing the event and panel!
Register for the Bay Area Executives Meetup: Super Panel on Influence
“The Many Facets Of Influence: How to Outreach, Engage, and Build Trust with Key Stakeholders”
An interactive panel with R Ray Wang, Michael Brito, Barbara French, Ali McCourt & Tony Welch
Tuesday, August 24th
Networking 6:30 - 7:00 PM
Panel 7:00 - 8:30 PM
Location: Samovar Conference Hall, Mountain View, Calif.
Event hashtag: #baexec
The panel will provide perspectives on these critical questions about influence:
1. What is influence? and how do we align it with business value?
2. The myths vs. realities of influence
3. Key success factors of influence
4. Identifying influencers: who and why?
Space is limited. Tickets are $20 in advance, $30 at the door and include gourmet food and wine. Register now to get on the waiting list and (hopefully) get confirmed!
Bring your questions, join the conversation, and engage!
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Influencers are magnets. For example, we know that an influential keynote speaker is a sure-fire way to attract an audience. Yet, influencers are not simply intermediaries between us and our customers. They can also attract other influencers to our brands, our causes and our communities.
Robert Scoble demonstrated this dynamic to me during the Supernova ‘09 reception last month. I had approached to ask his opinion on the growing raft of influencer ranking tools and we got to talking more generally about how influence works. Within minutes, Mashable’s Ben Parr interrupted, intent on getting Scoble to say he’d attend an upcoming event. Scoble was having none of it, until Parr mentioned that a particular person would be there. That changed everything. Scoble turned to me and said, “See, that’s one way you influence me.”
You’re not likely to be in Ben Parr’s position, in terms of knowing the one precise name to drop and when to drop it. However, you can get there. Here are some simple tips on how to attract influencers with influencers.
1. If you have a 1:1 relationship in place, just ask. I know it seems too simple. However, the best way to find out is to ask. Pose the question in an appropriate context. Be upfront. You might explain that you’re building a larger circle of thought leaders, and want to include the people that they would most like to associate with. Or ask, “Who influences you? Who most influences your thinking?” If you’re producing a panel discussion ask your influencers to name their dream panel.
2. Create opportunities to discover and develop relationships between your influencers. Let influencers mingle by arranging dinners or adding social time to your business events. The key is to facilitate introductions and conversations without being a control freak. Don’t hover every minute: allow private conversations within the group. Stand back and observe the social dynamics. Then figure out what you learned and how to apply it to make your influencer marketing program even better.
3. Open the door to diverse people inside your organization. It’s good practice to assign an employee as a buddy to an influencer - but only to a point. Make it easy for influencers to tap into different parts of your company and get to know a mix of personalities and roles. Put this capacity into the DNA of your influencer marketing program. Examples include issuing a descriptive contact list, enhancing a private influencer portal with selected employee profiles, or involving different topical experts each time you brief your opinion leaders.
4. Watch for signs of trouble. Every one of us comes with baggage. It’s our nature. So, make no assumptions about who attracts who and who repels who. As you get to know influencers as people, you’ll find that some at competing companies enjoy opportunities to rub elbows while some who appear repeatedly at the same events and in the same press stories privately loathe each other.
Ask, watch, listen, think. Trust me, there’s just no app for that human touch.
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While tech providers have had formal analyst relations programs for 30-odd years, only Gartner and Forrester Research have reciprocated with influencer programs dedicated to vendor AR teams.  GigaOM Pro, the industry research arm of GigaOM, is about to shake up the status quo with today’s formal debut of their Analyst Relations program.
The GigaOM Pro Analyst Relations program shares some expected similarities with the Gartner and Forrester programs. For example, all three programs require members to be involved in some capacity with analyst relations. All three programs also offer basic benefits to their AR participants, such as more in-depth knowledge about research agendas and decision rationale and special opportunities to get to know analysts and management.
So, what’s different about the GigaOM Pro AR program?
1. AR members receive a free, full access GigaOM Pro account.
2. AR members have full read/write community features. This means that AR members can use the community platform — within reason — to comment on GigaOM Pro research findings and engage with analysts and other subscribers.
3. AR members create a public-facing personal profile page, so that all other community members and analysts can get to know them as well. This is a great opportunity for personal branding and networking as an AR professional - not only with GigaOM Pro analysts but also with GigaOM Pro subscribers. Think about that.
4. AR members can leverage the program to build relations with the pool of GigaOM Pro analysts. It’s a constantly changing group of some of the most influential SOHO tech industry analysts and research-driven thought leaders in North America, handpicked and carefully vetted by the GigaOM Pro team.
You should also consider a few cautionary pointers:
- Sleuth the community before you start commenting, just as you would with any professional network.
- If you misbehave — i.e. post inappropriate comments or inappropriate volume of  comments — you may suffer more than having your account closed down. GigaOM attracts a sophisticated and knowledgeable readership. Your company reputation is on the line as much as yours whenever you comment.
- Be clear with everyone in your organization that this is a program designed specifically for people who handle analyst relations. It is not a doorway into GigaOM for press relations or press releases or a ticket to hijack research.
I strongly recommend this program to AR professionals. Check out the FAQ and if you like what you see, apply online. Or contact Mike Wolf, vice president of research at GigaOM Pro, for more information.
Useful Links
GiagOM Pro Analyst Relations Program - Info & Online Application
GigaOM Pro Analyst Relations Program - FAQ
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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: 16%
Succeeding in influencer relations requires a skill most often associated with sales and HR: schmoozing. Don’t think for a minute that business networking is best left to the natural-born schmoozers. Most of us spend a good part of our day working with information or brainstorming on strategy or listening in on conference calls. Telecommuting is further rooting us in our time- and place-shifted comfort zones. When you think about it, there’s little wonder that one-to-one networking can feel awkward.
One of my favorite series of tips comes from Guy Kawasaki, in a post he wrote back in 2006:
1. Understand the goal: discover what you can do for the person you’re meeting.
2. Get out: schmoozing requires practice, and networking requires situations where you can meet new people.
3. Ask good questions, then shut up: the point is to spend more time listening to earnest conversation, less time talking.
4. Unveil your passions: avoid coming across as a one-dimensional poster child for your job or company.
5. Read voraciously: being well informed is a good way to contribute to any conversation.
6. Follow up: email within 24 hours.
7. Make it easy to get in touch: no point meeting people if you don’t give them your contact details.
8. Give favors: pay it forward.
9. Ask for the return of favors: let people reciprocate the favors you grant.
I was reminded of every one of these points the last time I met with Ray Wang. He wove all of these into the course of our conversation and ended with a simple (and stunning) question: “So Barbara, tell me, what can I do for you?”
You can read Guy’s entire piece here: The Art of Schmoozing.
Popularity: 8%
The web has revolutionized the media and research businesses. Freely available and low-cost research is gaining stature as a viable alternative to higher-priced analyst research. Those who publish so-called “good enough†research are becoming trusted influencers in their own right. Plus, maturing web search services make it easier to find premium and sponsored research stored on the web in a variety of formats. So, how does a company develop two-way relationships and conversations with these alternative information sources? A natural choice is to add them to an existing analyst relations program.
Historically, analyst relations programs rejected the idea of serving any other type of research-based influencer. Competitive intelligence and market research departments took the lead on researchers beyond the analyst domain. This distinction makes less and less sense as the web evolves.
Today, AR programs are well positioned to respond to the growing stature of the in-house research departments at industry associations, professional associations, media networks, events companies, and bloggers. Examples include the research departments of associations such as the IEEE, Object Management Group and the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). Examples in the media include the product and trend research that has become the hallmark of TechWeb’s Dark Reading and CBS Interactive’s ZDNet.
Expanding the AR charter to include highly complementary influencers creates new efficiencies in manpower. Plus, embracing complementary categories of influencers enables the AR team to increase its strategic value and diversify best practices skill sets. Benefits also include rapid outreach to previously underserved influencer categories.
Popularity: 7%
Human relationships tend to be complicated, and relationships with influencers are no exception. Yet, you need to know where you stand with an influencer and to share that insight with others in your organization. That’s why so many of us strive to describe influencer relationships in terms that are simple, meaningful and broadly applicable.
There are many different systems for scoring relationship strength and, if you’re like me, you’re likely to develop a custom system rather than adopt something off-the-shelf.
Some systems are based on the old media mentions scoring. These score influencer relationships the same way that one scores media mentions: positive, negative, neutral or unknown. Usually there’s an “inactive” choice thrown into the mix.
Other systems go to into greater depth, all the way up to using 10-point scales for various attributes that average out to an overall “strength”. Typical attributes include knowledge, information exchange, willingness to engage, willingness to recommend, frequency of contact and more.
There’s no right or wrong way to do this. What matters is that you capture useful information in a professional, consistent and repeatable way and that you act on it.
Whatever method you use, consider adopting these 3 tenets:
1. Keep it as simple as possible.
2. Apply it as honestly as possible.
3. Respect the time and privacy of your influencers as much as possible.
Popularity: 2%
In today’s Email Insider newsletter, guest contributor Chad White (Smith-Harmon) points out fundamental differences between email programs used tactically and those used strategically. His points resonate with influencer programs as well:
Those that are using it [email marketing] tactically view email campaigns as isolated one-off events. An email is sent out and sales are tallied up. There’s no bigger picture. Their subscribers are just numbers that produce more numbers.
Those that are using it [email marketing] strategically view email campaigns as part of an ongoing conversation, an ever-changing relationship with individual subscribers. To those in this group, their email list is an extremely valuable and closely guarded asset.
Many companies fall into the same traps with their influencer programs.
The press, bloggers and analysts tend to complain about being treated in a tactical way. They bite back. Or, they stop answering calls and emails.
What about other types of influencers? They are less likely to complain. Their attention simply shifts to companies who demonstrate greater respect and interest in their opinions. In some cases, they include your treatment of them as another insight they share about your company culture, setting low expectations with prospects and others in their circle of influence.
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Please join us for what promises to be a lively discussion about what’s wrong with marketing and how an influencer program can fix it. On May 20th, we are hosting a reception and presentation on influencer marketing at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.
Check out the details below. We’ve reserved complimentary tickets so email me (barbara.french@influencer50.com) or any of us, to get onto the guest list.
“Marketing Is Broken, but Influencers Can Fix It”
Purchasing decisions made within organizations have changed over the past decade, but marketing hasn’t. Today, networks or “ecosystems” of influencers shape enterprise purchase decisions. Hayes draws from work with clients such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and Orange Business Services to show how to identify the diverse individuals who influence decision-makers in a market, how they influence, and how to engage them.
Date: May 20, 2009
Reception: 5:30 PM
Presentation, Q&A: 6:00PM
Where: Commonwealth Club, 595 Market St., 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105 (directions & parking)
 Phone: +1 (415) 597-6700
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Bloggers who are compensated for endorsing products and services could be held liable for any false statements they make, if newly proposed FTC guidelines are adopted. I’m pleased to see some movement beyond voluntary blogger transparency.
I’m a fan of voluntary transparency. It puts peer pressure on bloggers to tell you about sponsorships and other compensation. It has uncovered several unethical promotional campaigns. However, I see shortcomings as well. Voluntary transparency does not hold bloggers’ feet to the fire with regards to the honesty of their statements.
Consumers and brands suffering unfairly due to false statements have little recourse. This situation favors the powerful and wealthy — who can afford to pay for endorsements and posts — and undermines the value of word of mouth (WOM) influence.
Excerpting from coverage at AdAge:
As part of its review of its advertising guidelines, the FTC is proposing that word-of-mouth marketers and bloggers, as well as people on social-media sites such as Facebook, be held liable for any false statements they make about a product they’re promoting, along with the product’s marketer. This could present a significant issue for marketers, including the likes of Microsoft, Ford and Pepsi, who spend billions on word-of-mouth and social media. PQ Media projects that marketers will spend $3.7 billion on word-of-mouth marketing in 2011.
The current FTC guideline on endorsements and testimonials in advertising was issued in 1980.
Hat tip to Andy Beal, Markeing Pilgrim, for raising the topic.
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