Ever wonder how many “influentials” exist in the world, and how they exert their influence? Apparently the answer is approximately 20 million adult consumers worldwide. They use several offline and online channels to exert influence across their larger-than-normal personal networks in a multitude of product categories on any given day. This, according to “Global Multipliers”, a study released earlier this year by The New York Times, Thomson Reuters and MediaVest.

Global multipliers is the term they use for uber-influential consumers. A few of the findings:

• In a typical week, Multipliers communicate with about 50 percent more people than average consumers, both in person and online.
• Global Multipliers reside in all countries around the world, albeit in numbers relative to the population and local economic development. For example, the study estimates that while there are 2.6 million Global Multipliers in the United States, there are some 242,000 Multipliers in Argentina.
• Global Multipliers are more likely than average consumers to spread both positive (89% vs. 74%) and negative (51% vs. 43%) reviews of products.
• Global Multipliers are more social than average consumers. In a typical day, Global Multipliers communicate with 50% more people both online (36 people vs. 24) and offline (29 vs. 20).
• They are also more likely to use the Internet to share their opinions quickly and on a large scale by forwarding links (68% vs. 49% of average consumers), social networking (64% vs. 54%), posting user reviews (50% vs. 30%) and blogging (46% vs. 34%). Global Multipliers send and receive approximately 1.6 billion e-mails and 1.2 billion text messages every day and post 331 million blog entries every week.

A white paper on the study is available for the asking. Contact The New York Times. The study was based on research of 4,000 individuals consisting of an online survey and one-on-one interviews conducted in 10 cities around the world.

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TechCrunch has edged into the syndicated research business, the traditional turf of analyst firms such as Gartner, Forrester Research, IDC, Burton Group, et al. The idea behind TechCrunch Research is elegantly simple: package up quarterly reports based on the open source CrunchBase wiki database, sell the reports at economical price points and promote the service across the TechCrunch media network.

What are the implications for analysts and influencer relations managers? Hint: This isn’t about the upfront revenues from selling research reports, or annual subscriptions.

The implication for analysts who cover tech and mobile start-ups is serious new competition for the coveted role as a trusted and well-known expert. TechCrunch Research is promoted across the TechCrunch network — a network that garners 5.5 million unique visitors each month and is wildy popular with VCs, start-ups, early adopters and C-level tech execs. Name an analyst firm that can compete with that kind of audience on this particular market segment. In an attention economy, TechCrunch Research looks like a winner.

There is another implication and it goes far beyond analysts who cover start-ups. TechCrunch Research is the first serious competitor basing paid research subscriptions on open sourced content.

Think about that for a minute. Think about the difference this represents in the cost of acquiring data and the options for making money off of it without sacrificing integrity.

CrunchBase covers close to 19,000 start-ups, plus funding activity, acquisition activity and profiles of some people. Contributors include the TechCrunch staff plus readers and those wanting to be listed. In other words, it’s community based.

Plus, it’s published under a Creative Commons Attribution License [CC-BY], thus it is “open source”. It’s also freely available, however try not to confuse open source with free. “Open source” is strictly about the license rights, “freely available” is strictly about the price tag to the buyer.

Finally, what about analyst relations managers and others involved in influencer relations? First, take a hard look at the TechCrunch demographics to understand how the readership maps to your decision-makers and their influencers.

If it counts, then consider what you’ll need to track: TechCrunch Research reports, the CrunchBase database and coverage and comments impacting reputation across the TechCrunch media network.

Regardless of whether or not your interests center on start-ups, take a good look at CrunchBase. How will you manage relationships with research outfits when their researchers include the community as well as the named staffers? That’s an interesting picture.

And just in case your knee-jerk reaction to any of this is, “Never gonna happen on my watch”, remember this: where TechCrunch goes, others follow. Many others.

For more on TechCrunch’s entry into the research market, see my coverage at Tekrati, TechCrunch Reinforces Entry into Syndicated Research 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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Rich Vancil, vice president of IDC’s Executive Advisory Group, blogs a sad prediction: marketing budgets will be cut roughly 15% during the first half of 2009. He also makes an interesting point on the virtues of investing consistently in marketing:

I have believed that good marketing investment policy has elements of a large inertial flywheel: let it stop spinning and the fuel to get it going again costs a lot more than if steady increments had been consistently applied. Vendors should have the wherewithal and courage to keep their investments basically steady.
– Richard Vancil

I’ve seen the same “flywheel” dynamic in influencer relations, as well. Consistently applying effort and attention requires less overall time, energy and funding — and pays greater dividends in the long run.

Check out the blog for marketing management advice on weathering the economic storm.

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One of the top 10 questions we’re asked by new clients is, “what’s the best way to measure our influencer program?” Today, there’s no single “right” answer to that question. The answer varies according to the state and direction of the organization, its business objectives, and the market it’s addressing.

Each organization undertakes an influencer program for its own unique set of reasons. Even head-to-head competitors — targeting similar influencers in the same market — often declare different objectives and apply different measures.

That’s not to say there’s a lack of valid techniques for measuring the impact of influencer programs. Quite the contrary. It’s just that there’s no one-size-fits-all formula.

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association is one of the industry groups recognizing the need for a selection of valid measurement approaches. Their measurement research committee suggests that at least 4 measurement models deserve serious attention:

• Customer Value Matrix
• NetPromoter(TM) Economics
• Social Value of Opinion Leaders
• Conversation Value(TM) Model

Thought leaders like Ogilvy’s John Bell are paying attention, just as we are. These models will evolve rapidly. We can all help shape the thinking. We all have a hand in the rate of adoption.

Meanwhile, don’t hesitate to adopt a measurement model that makes sense for your organization.

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Today I saw 2 more threads in the ongoing debate over whether social media popularity is a good way to measure influence.

First, my colleague Duncan Brown writes that Google is launching an AdWords-style SEM program across big social networks.

As an online publisher, I can see how this Google program makes perfect sense for media buyers. It will play from Madison Avenue to Main Street. After all, the big advertisers say they plan to shift their remaining 2008 and 2009 spending, cutting traditional ad spending while increasing spending on word of mouth and other forms of social media. (For the latest CMO study visit Epsilon; hat tip to Ken Rutowski for flagging it in his newsletter.) Google is offering just the right media product to pick up those extra dollars and euros. I’ve got no issue there.

However, I do see a potential downside. Call it collateral damage. Google is portraying the program as a measure of influence. Duncan describes the confusion this could cause:

“If Google’s plans get more firms to talk about influence, then fine. But I fear that it will dumb influence down to a few ‘magic’ numbers that have tenuous relevance to real influence.”

Meanwhile, Graham Hill and I compared notes this morning on Peter Kim’s post, “Influencer Lists as Ego Traps“. We came up agreeing, in Graham’s words:

“Popular people are not necessarily good influencers. And influencers are not necessarily popular. There is much more to it than that.”

We’ve got some very bright people on both sides of the debate — those advocating that we equate influence with popularity/connectedness, those advising against it. Neither side is ready to blink.

In the end, the media buyers may have the final vote on whether online popularity is the path to the influentials.

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Tom Smith’s guest post at Mashable makes the point that we now trust the opinions of strangers as much as we trust our close friends, thanks to social media. He’s highlighting findings from the Universal McCann study, “When did we start trusting strangers”. Don’t let yourself get lulled into thinking this phenomenon is taking place only in consumer markets. Social media is also changing the way that businesses source trusted opinions on products and services.

Social media is transforming B2B decision-maker ecosystems in two fundamental ways. The most notable, according to Influencer50 research, is that more categories of advisors are exerting more influence during B2B purchase decisions. Social media is helping make many types of “hidden” advisors more visible, more accessible, more informed.

Another change is the appearance of new types of influencers. Examples include niche consultants, procurement groups, and expert communities.

The bottomline is that social media is changing the way we slice the B2B influence pie, just as it is changing influence in consumer markets.

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The high tech industry analysts aren’t making much headway among the SMB decision-makers, according to this week’s Sage Market Pulse from Chadwick Martin Bailey. In this survey, independent consultants and colleagues lead all other types of external advisors on IT needs and solutions.

You can see that SMB decision-makers are a smart bunch. They set up a well-balanced decision ecosystem for themselves. They distribute their attention among 3 primary groups — independent consultants, colleagues (peers), and the combined sales channel — direct, VAR, SI, outsoucing providers.

The CMB Sage Market Pulse is a free weekly email blast. I’ve subscribed to it for years, long before CMB acquired Kathryn Korostoff’s Sage Research. Good read for marketing and sales. Highly recommend it.

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If you sell technology, you already know that sourcing advisors figure prominently in your influencer ecosystems. Have you ever wondered how they manage to get into your accounts in the first place?

Most likely, they’re getting to your customers and prospects through word of mouth referrals, vendor referrals, or direct sales. That’s according to a new study on the sourcing advisory business by Phil Fersht, AMR Research analyst and blogger, and Ed Nair, Global Sources (part of CyberMedia India Ltd.). The survey finds sourcing advisors get as many business leads from vendor referrals as they do from their own direct sales efforts.

In other words, sourcing advisors obtain the lion’s share of their business through influencer marketing (word of mouth, vendor referrals).

This helps explain why sourcing advisors are such a disruptive and persistent force during a decision process — they walk in with networked authority.

The study is free and well worth a read, despite the dubious title and tagline — “The Definitive Survey of Sourcing Advisers”, the first ever study on…. (Phil, you ought to know better.)

Hat tip to Vinnie Mirchandani.

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There’s quite a debate raging over whether IT decision-makers are influenced by blogs and other forms of social media. No matter which side you take in this debate, you’ll find good news and bad news in the latest installment of the “IT Social Media Index.”

The IT Social Media Index is becoming a twice-yearly survey conducted by ITtoolbox (now part of the Corporate Executive Board). It’s sponsored by PJA Advertising + Marketing.

This time out, the Index finds social media content consumption is up across most IT job positions. IT professionals are spending more time per week with social media and user-generated content.

The survey defines social media types as discussion groups, peer-to-peer networks, social networks and profiles, blogs, wikis, podcasts, and mash-ups.

Which is most popular overall with IT professionals?

You probably guessed it: discussion groups. Discussion groups command the most time per week.

There’s an odd split in results among tech decision-makers. The “executive decision-maker” respondents are consuming less social media and user-generated content. That’s bad news for social/UGC advocates because presumably, these are the very decision-makers that the high-rolling tech advertisers will pay dearly to reach.

Meanwhile, the “IT decision-makers” are consuming more social media and user-generated content.

Visit ITtoolbox to download and browse survey results. It’s absolutely free. Plus, there’s some interesting trivia, from early mentors to tastes in music and politicians.

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