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%

You can’t do influencer relations without a good set of tools for identifying influencers and measuring and tracking their influence. Here’s a new tool for your consideration: Edelman’s TweetLevel, by Jonny Bentwood. TweetLevel calculates an “importance” rating of 0-100 for anyone with a Twitter handle. And, it’s free to use.

Most of the big agencies provide their clients with pricey dashboards and services for monitoring company reputation, PR programs and more. So it’s refreshing to see this Twitter discovery and ranking tool out in the public domain offered free of charge.

The total “importance” score is based on measurements in 4 areas: influence, popularity, engagement and trust. The underlying data comes from a combination of respected 3rd party influence/activity ranking sources, such as TwInfluence, and original Edelman calculations.

TweetLevel saves you time and gives you repeatable results, which we all need. From there, it’s up to you. It can’t tell you who the influencer is engaged with or whether the Twitter exchanges are positive, negative or neutral.

How would you use it today? A couple of ways to consider even now, during beta:

Popularity: 4%

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.

Popularity: 3%

It’s easy to get caught up in what to say, how to say it — even how many characters to say it in — and completely lose sight of the simple truth that our words are just words, unless they’re backed by actions.

This is certainly not a new idea. However, it’s being expressed by lots of different people right now. Everyone has a different context. Witness:

Seth Godin talks to it in terms of authenticity.

Greg Cordell talks about it in terms of love.

Duncan Brown touches on it in terms of what makes a good analyst.

We’re all facing the same tough year. Maybe this is a good time to take stock of ourselves and the people we trust. Ask some of the hard questions. Look for the proof points. See who measures up while the chips are down.

Popularity: 1%

LinkedIn is one of several tools that can help influencers pursue their passion for gathering and sharing knowledge. Here’s some insight from my own experiments as well as conversations with influencers:

Starting with basics, treat LinkedIn as a directory for being found. Create a complete profile. Write every section of text for fast, easy reading — and with a eye for search engine matches. Many people will find your profile by searching the web.

Next, consider using at least 2 of the new profile widgets: displaying your blog feed, and a SlideShare or Google presentation. These make your profile stand out from other experts with similar credentials and networks.

Judicious participation in Q&A is another tactic for giving people a sense of you and your style. Likewise, consider giving and receiving recommendations to partners, clients and colleagues.

More and more influencers are joining LinkedIn Groups, and those able to devote the extra time are creating and promoting their own groups.

Up until now, the emphasis has been on sculpting an online profile that conveys something of you in human terms, on top of a standard cv-style profile. Some steps also take you into the shallow end of the pool as a participant in the LinkedIn community.

This brings us to the final point, and it is strictly personal: contact settings. This determines how LinkedIn members can contact you — through referrals, or directly through LinkedIn’s InMail.

Look forward to your thoughts and experiences. Please share!

Popularity: 1%

Scott Brinker blogged about propinquity and Twitter last week. I’d never heard the word propinquity before. However, propinquity seems to be a label for a familiar concept — the notion that physical promixity promotes relationships. My parents harped about that while I was a teen. Happily, Scott takes a different tack. He suggests that social media applications such as Twitter may wear down the effects of physical promixity in relationship dynamics. I wonder what kind of effect they will have on relationships with influencers. And how we will measure it.

Today, we use several criteria for measuring influence for our Influencer50 clients. Our metrics include factors such as an influencer’s

• market reach
• frequency of impact
• quality of impact
• closeness to decision

“Closeness to decision” is where propinquity comes into play. We include physical proximity and timing in this metric. So, we already think of closeness to a decision as a measure of more than physical distance.

It’s not hard to envision extending “closeness to decision” with new metrics focused on social media, mobile communications, or both.

Several companies already use Twitter as a way to engage with influencers and customer conversations online. Duncan has written about this development in The Influencer, our free newsletter.

One thing is clear. We haven’t gotten our collective heads around the implications of social media in terms of influence. We’re still caught up in early adopter personalities and tactics.

Sometime soon, we’ll need to stop counting social media links and echoes. We need to start agreeing on what counts as distance and what counts as closeness and what counts as influence.

Popularity: 2%

R “Ray” Wang has posted a synopsis of his role as an industry analyst. Ray is with Forrester Research. His clients include tech buyers and tech providers. As a result, his straightforward summary describes the main roles that many analysts play in the tech industry.

I noticed that Ray doesn’t focus on describing his influence. He doesn’t call out his role as an influencer in the enterprise software market. Instead, he describes how he helps clients and how he creates intellectual property for Forrester through his research, analysis, consulting, and reports.

Many important influencers avoid the “influencer” label. It’s not the way they talk about themselves.

They leave such determinations to people like us here at Influencer50, who identify and score influencers on a market by market, client by client basis.

There’s no magic formula for being a great analyst or a great influencer. Ray’s a great role model for both.

Popularity: 2%

Some events are so saturated with powerful people discussing powerful ideas that they gain the stature of an uber influencer in their own right. Two of these rare events take place in the western U.S. in the early months of each year: TED and South by Southwest. This year, a 3rd event joins their ranks — and jostles right to the top of the pack. That’s the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States.

This is one presidential inauguration that will carry influence far beyond the Beltway. It will be the Woodstock of American politics, the American answer to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The inauguration celebration, like the man himself, is destined to be a powerful influence. Those who are able to leverage inaugural speaker platforms will reap the benefits for a long time.

What catapults an event like this inauguration, TED or SXSW to the stature of super-influence?

First and foremost is the quality of the event as a speaker platform. That includes the complete speaker line-up and the focus and context of the agenda. It also includes the composition — and disposition — of the audience.

Then there’s the experience of being at the event. The experience exists only in the minds of the actual participants — organizers, staff, performers, audience, media. They in turn stream their experience to people who weren’t there through word of mouth, user-generated content, and paid media coverage.

In the tech industry, we’ve grown accustomed to the rippling influence of TED and SXSW. This year will be a little different. TED 2009 and SXSW 2009 participants will feel the rippling influence of a historic presidential inauguration. I look forward to participants at each event interpreting it, amplifying it and passing it along.

Popularity: 1%

Dale Vile, co-founder and managing director of Freeform Dynamics, announced a change in leadership at his company. Jon Collins is stepping up to take over as Managing Director of Freeform Dynamics, while Dale assumes a role as Research Director. Co-founder Helen Vile continues as operations director. I expect this transition will be seamless, and look forward to seeing what Jon does with the reigns of Freeform.

In Silicon Valley, it’s almost expected that founders take a step back as their companies mature. Not so in the industry analyst business. Analyst companies are top-down in terms of management. Changes at the top tend to ripple down and out fairly quickly. Culture, research practices, client relations, trust and influence — all can change very quickly. Examples are all around us. Look at the changes Emily Green has brought to Yankee Group, and Gene Hall brought to Gartner.

Dale and Helen seem to have taken all the right steps in transitioning the top job. Best wishes to Jon, Dale and the rest of the Freeform Dynamics crew.

Popularity: 1%

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.

Popularity: 3%