I’ve been knee-deep in influencer identification projects this month. It’s my first foray beyond custom industry analyst & consultant lists since my vendor marketing days. The work has been fun and interesting and much more demanding (i.e. harder) than I expected. Frankly, I just didn’t realize how much work goes into finding the top 50 to 100 influencers in a given market for a given product or service.

Here are a couple of early observations about the challenges in my journey from a pure-play analyst watcher to a full-score influencer watcher.

Top Challenge: volume
What: Hands down, my biggest challenge is adjusting to the sheer quantity and variety of candidates at the start of analysis. There are easily a couple thousand noteworthy people actively influencing some aspect of purchase decisions on a particular product or service in a specific region.
Shift: I came into this accustomed to starting influencer identification projects with a few hundred analysts tops.

Close 2nd: mental gymnastics
What: Another challenge is the number of filters you use, how often you flip between them and how you align them. Each type of influencer behaves differently, and many exert influence independent of their job title.
Shift: I’ve been advising on this dynamic within the analyst relations world for several years — even within analyst relations you need a sophisticated set of filters. Yet I’ve never flipped between so many sets of criteria, so many times, during one project.

As if 1 & 2 aren’t enough: noise and silence
What: Some very influential people have a very small footprint in the public domain. These quiet influential types don’t jump out of the research and kiss you on the cheek. Meanwhile, there’s no shortage of wind bags.
Shift: It’s like those perceptual illusions and Hidden Pictures puzzles: once you know what attributes you’re looking, you spot them.

There’d be a much longer list of challenges, had I attempted these projects on my own. Duncan and Nick have a killer approach and solid tools and the research team here is top notch.

What about you? Please share your stories and links on identifying influencers.

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Companies providing social media monitoring tools and services provide many ways to find and monitor influential voices out on the web. One of the latest proclamations is from Visible Technologies, now promoting a social marketing ROI study:

Leading companies ‘use multiple approaches to identify the individuals who wield the greatest amount of influence in any given topic area and to track changes in their influence over time,’ according to the report. ‘Best-in-Class companies engage these top influencers as brand evangelists, and then track the impact of their words and actions in terms of return on marketing investment.’

The same holds true for identifying those who wield influence out in the physical world, through offline means: associations, personal networks, professional position, education. There are many ways to find these individuals. In our work, we use several tools and entry points to uncover top influencers in each market. There’s no silver bullet. No one method does the trick in any market, let alone every market.

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Influence made The Harvard Business Review 2009 List of breakthrough business ideas.

As you know, I’m a fan of the idea that social media may expand traditional spheres of influence by eroding reliance on physical “nearness” (propinquity), to decision-makers.

The HBR study by James Fowler and Nicholas A. Christakis tightens the noose the other way:

“New research shows that personal influence is a short-range phenomenon, dissipating entirely at three degrees of remove from the person who exercises it. This has implications for business, where the success of campaigns to foster, say, creativity or worker safety may hinge on enlisting employees to influence colleagues’ behavior.”

That means we influence only a very small sphere of people in our personal lives.

On the up side, it does support our Influencer50 ethos: conduct quality research into bona fide influencers, understand their networks, and work with them directly.

Hat tip to Leili McKinley.

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You probably think of LinkedIn as a recruiting and job hunting network. It also serves as a valuable backoffice tool for analyst relations, consultant relations, and fully integrated B2B influencer programs.

The price is certainly right: basic services are free, and business upgrades are economical. Plus, the number of profiles keeps growing. As of last week, LinkedIn claimed more than 35 million members in 200+ countries. Finally, the general demographics are a good match.

I’ve been guiding influencers and clients alike toward LinkedIn since its debut in 2003. Used properly, it can boost influencer relations productivity. Over-reliance can run your program aground very quickly.

For best results in influencer identification, use LinkedIn for corroboration and expansion of facts gleaned through other research sources.

The reason is simple: LinkedIn contains user-generated content. Unlike Wikipedia, there’s no team of editors debating accuracy. Fact checking is your responsibility — not LinkedIn’s, not the person posting about themselves.

For best results in influencer engagement, use LinkedIn to find people who can introduce you to your targeted influencers.

Can you use LinkedIn to connect with an influencer you’ve never met? My advice is no, don’t go that way. First, learn influencer contact etiquette and develop a sense of how to interpret — not simply read — the LinkedIn profiles of influencers. You’ll develop a good sense of when you’re looking at a solid opportunity for breaking the common sense rules of engagement.

I’ll continue this thread tomorrow, with a look at how some influencers have been using LinkedIn.

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It’s easy to fall into thinking that focusing on the top 15 or 25 or 100 influencers in a given market is a good idea for every company. That’s not necessarily so, unless you can vet their influence with decision-makers for your product or service in your market.

Mack Collier points out a good example: his experience with the “Pepsi 25″ campaign. Pepsi had targeted Mack and 24 other high profile bloggers with 3 deliveries of cans showing the evolution of the Pepsi logo over 100 years, right up to the latest logo. Most of the 25 bloggers were happy to blog about Pepsi and it’s logo. By contrast, Mack said:

I mean on one hand I appreciated the effort that Pepsi went to in sending these materials to me. Obviously they send the cans and promotional materials to myself and 24 other people because they thought we were ‘influential’ in the social media space, and that we would blog/twitter/podcast about this promotion, and hopefully in a favorable light… Now the problem for me is, I know I’m not influential to Pepsi drinkers, cause I don’t drink Pepsi (Dr Pepper here. Wouldn’t you like to be a Pepper, too?).

He goes on to suggest that his spot in the Pepsi 25 would have been better used on a loyal customer — someone who would have behaved as an evangelist out of love for the Pepsi product. Someone connected to others who also would talk about Pepsi and encourage purchases, and so on.

Pepsi 25 hit a dead-end with Mack.

As Duncan says, it’s not about influence, it’s about influence with the right people.

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One group of influencers is about to undergo sweeping change in the U.S.: government agencies and regulators. Government influence varies greatly by industry. Yet it is present to some extent in virtually all industries.

In the book, Influencer Marketing, Nick and Duncan identify three likely roles for government agencies and regulators:

• proclaimers - those who mandate or “proclaim” how the world will be
• aggregators / communicators - information gatherers and disseminators
• negotiators - determining anything from ethics to environmental requirements

It’s easy to see what they mean. Look at the green tech / clean tech markets. These have become a hot spot for government influence. Many governments are encouraging — if not mandating — rapid adoption. They are raising awareness among consumers and businesses. Some governments are pioneering new standards. Still others are funding R&D, manufacturing, professional training, entire industries, and jobs.

Every new administration in the U.S. federal government brings substantive changes throughout the uppermost layers of government. Sooner or later, the changes trickle down to local governments.

Changes in government influence are headed your way. Be ready for it.

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Following on the heels of layoffs at Gartner and AMR Research, comes word that Yankee Group and iSuppli also reduced headcount. Yankee Group CEO Emily Nagel discussed the reduction in the company blog. Meanwhile, there is word of a reduction at iSuppli, a firm that just recently acquired Telematics Research Group (TRG). This much consolidation in the tech industry analyst community has implications for analyst relations and influencer programs.

Tech suppliers can react in one of two ways.

The most common reaction is list management. The premise is that you automatically replace one analyst name on your list of influencers with another analyst name. When somebody moves out, you move somebody up.

That’s exactly what the analyst salespeople want tech suppliers — and IT decision makers — to do. Swap one analyst with another. Treat them as interchangeable parts. Transfer your trust, no hesitation.

That strategy would work really well, if analysts were toasters.

The other option is research. This entails pulsing your salesforce and decision-makers and evaluating the overall market segment, to find out how influence is shifting on the ground. The idea is that you think outside the box, and make no assumptions that one analyst is replaced by another analyst out in the marketplace.

You may find that a trusted analyst is being supplanted by a consultant or a thought leader from an IT association. You may find most decision-makers taking a wait-and-see attitude, opting for no immediate adjustments to their circle of advisors.

In the end, trust is not about lists or toasters or interchangeable people. Trust is personal, especially when company or career is on the line.

Short-term, there’s little likelihood that you can uncover every decision where an exiting analyst was advising. Look into the priority transactions in your pipeline; assess and act on those situations on a case by case basis.

For the long haul? My advice is don’t rush to revise your influencer list. Live with the gaps until the dust settles and you can figure out what’s really happening.

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When you think about the people capable of influencing your customers and prospects, take a good long look at your sales channel partners. A channel partner’s sphere of influence can extend far beyond their own customers and territory. Put their influence to work for you by incorporating them into your influencer program.

Success depends largely on choosing the right channel partners. This means curtailing internal politics during the selection process. Likewise, it’s not a popularity contest. Focus on partner attributes that will serve your company well, both out of the gate and over the long run. For example, look for channel partners:

• Aimed at the same core markets and segments as you are
• With an established positive reputation in your core markets
• Willing to invest in their relationship with your company, such as participating in your training and co-marketing programs
• Able to provide reliable customer references

Once you’ve shortlisted the partners, it’s a matter of picking the people within those companies that you want to induct into your influencer program.

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It’s going to be a tough year to stay current with influencers.

Under normal circumstances, Influencer50 research puts the attrition among a company’s top 50 influencers at about 20 percent per year. That means that in a 12-month period, 10 of the 50 will have changed jobs.

It doesn’t look as though 2009 will offer normal circumstances. I would expect that rate to climb. Large and mid-sized companies are reducing headcount, and consolidating through mergers and acquisitions. Small businesses and independent contractors may be forced to bridge lean sales by hooking up with larger companies.

It’s a good idea to keep a closer eye on the top 50 influencers in each of your markets. Watch for new voices rising up, established voices tuning out, changes in focus.

Remember too that influence is not necessarily a real-time activity. Decision-makers tend to remember an influencer’s opinion long after obtaining it.

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An influencer program can be a powerful asset in countering sales objections. Here are a few well-proven tips from our collection of case studies:

1. Compile and prioritize specific sales objections. Don’t accept generalities at the outset. You can generalize later. Start with clear, articulate objections. Get a good sense of frequency, too.

2. Identify external influencers who have both the credibility and the message to address each sales objection. Remember, your focus is finding 3rd party influencers with credibility in the eyes of your customer decision-makers. The “right” influencer is one who has the credibility and already has the counter-argument to the sales objection.

That’s an important point and it bears repeating:

Your role is to find the right influencers — not to manufacture them.

3. Design appropriate vehicles for capturing influencer counter-arguments and conveying them to decision-makers as objections arise.

It’s straightforward and sheer common sense.

Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

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