Chris O’Brien over at the Merc published The Influencers of Silicon Valley, a list of 10 important influencers in Silicon Valley. I’m on record as one who likes lists, and I’m recommending you read this one. These are people you may want to get to know. Plus, Chris revealed a bit about how he compiled the list, and you’ll find that of interest if you’re compiling your own list of market influencers.

First, who’s in: Marnie Webb, Susan Wu, Dave McClure, Charlene Li, Kevin Surace, Vish Mishra, Criag Hampel, Lisa Stone, Steve Blank and Tim O’Reilly. These are not just the usual suspects. The group is made up of people who each influence the industry in a special way. They don’t seek influence for the sake of influence. They’re driven by innovation and furthering business.

Next, Chris’ approach to list building:

Through conversations, emails and tweets with colleagues, friends and sources, I compiled an initial list of more than 100 candidates, including many I had never heard of. Then I whittled it down, in part by focusing on those who are having a real, quantifiable impact. In many cases, these people might be superstars in their realm yet barely known outside of it. My final 10 are not necessarily the most influential, but they are playing an essential role in shaping the valley’s innovation economy.

Take-aways for building your own list of influencers:

• It’s a great idea to talk to people on the ground when you’re compiling a raw list of influencers. Like Chris, you’ll discover people you don’t know and would otherwise overlook. Talking to people can also help in validating and ranking your list. You’ll begin discovering which of the big-name luminaries really hold sway and which are filtered out.

• Articulate a clear objective for compiling the list, and stick to it. Are you looking for the famous? The rich? The movers and shakers? The people who talk to start-ups or mid-size enterprises?

• Document the reasons for including each person on your list. A simple numerical ranking is not enough. Human beings need human reasons to pursue relationships. What kinds of relationships do your influencers build and why are these relationships important to you?

Congrats to everyone, and hats off to Chris for great work.

Popularity: 4%

Lots of people play a part in a typical B2B purchase decision and naturally, identifying them is an important activity for any influencer relations program. You need to know who they are, including their name, job and location. First, you have to figure out who they are. That’s no so easy.

The big temptation is to start by asking the primordial question, “Who’s influencing the decision-makers at my accounts?”, and then jumping right to the obvious answers.

Not so fast!

It pays to back up one step. Start by thinking about the different kinds of people likely to be involved in purchase decisions for your products and services. This exercise helps you form a more complete picture of the influencer landscape. It also helps you avoid falling into ruts. This step encourages you to think about new types of influencers that may have emerged in your market and types of influencers your company tends to overlook.

In my case, I use the 24 categories of influencers from the Influencer Marketing book (page 55) with some additions for some clients. Generally, this basic list covers the ground and more:

Academia
Authors and management thinkers
Bloggers (and microbloggers)
Business and trade journalists
Buyers groups, purchasing lists and procurement authorities
Commentators and other individuals
Complementary partners
Conferences and events
Consumers and consumer groups
Customer firms
Financial analysts
Government agencies and regulators
Individual and niche consultants
Industry analysts
Industry bodies, forums and federations
Internal influencers
Management consultancies
Online forums
Peers (role-based, industry-based)
Retailers
Specialty consultancies
Standards bodies
Systems Integrators
VARs, distributors and similar channel partners
Venture capitalists and investors

Get the most out of this exercise by concentrating on the types of influencers likely to have an effect on decision-makers during the actual decision process. Influence can be exerted directly — one-to-one, influencer to decision-makers — or indirectly. Indirect entails exerting influence through intermediaries.

Popularity: 12%

There are several good reasons to replace the terms “influencer” and “influencer marketing” in the marketing vocabulary. What are the best  alternatives? I don’t know the answer, however I see signs of a backlash against misuse and abuse of these terms.

What are the issues with the word influencer?

To start, not everyone likes being branded as an influencer. As Evan Quinn so often tells me (and I’m not the only one), many analysts bristle under the “influencer” label.

Then too, there’s the growing confusion around who is an “influencer”.  As Duncan Brown so often says, not everyone is an influencer. You can’t transform anybody into an influencer. Finding influencers is just not that easy, even in the wild west of social media.

Finally, as Nick Hayes says, “None of us has ever seen anybody with a business card that says ‘Influencer’.”

By contrast, there are the outstanding examples where the terms are applied appropriately and best practices applied flawlessly.  Case in point: Don Bulmer’s program at SAP. Such clearcut instances are more exception than norm.

The right words are out there. If we pay attention, we’ll recognize them when we hear them.

Popularity: 8%

Looking for a useful definition of “influencer” within the context of influencer marketing? Duncan gives a great run down in a B2B Marketing Online feature on influencer marketing by Meg de Jong, acting deputy editor:

“Duncan Brown, European managing director at specialist company Influencer50, points out that in terms of B2B marketing, marketers will be specifically interested in those individuals that impact on the buying decisions of firms.

“Depending on the specifics of your business, a large variety of people – both internal and external to your target companies – could be identified as influencers. These include journalists, consultants, academics, authors, sourcing advisors, management gurus, procurement advisors, systems integrators, regulators, government executives, standards setters, industry associations, resellers, lobbyists, events, forums and bloggers, among many possibilities.”

I am surprised to find Duncan saying that it’s rare for customers to be influencers. Sales professionals repeatedly tell me that customer references and customer case studies are highly valuable in winning business — not only towards the end of the purchase decision, but during short-listing as well.

Otherwise, it’s a excellent overview of B2B influencer marketing.

Popularity: 2%

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: 4%

It sounds so simple: tell me your definition of an industry analyst. In truth, coming up with a viable definition for the tech “industry analyst” is not such a simple exercise. Clear-cut distinctions between industry analysts and other types of influencers have been dissolving over the last few years.

From 2006 to 2008, I helped the industry come to some common understanding by writing and curating the base Wikipedia article on industry analysts. It doesn’t quite do the job anymore.

Today, definitions of the industry analyst role run into trouble on several fronts. You’ve got big differences in the balance of research and consulting revenue streams at the largest to the smallest of analyst firms. There’s also competition from more and more quarters, including diverse businesses, organizations and social media groups publishing “good enough” research and vendor reviews, not to mention decision advice and thought leadership. Then too, there’s the growing number of SOHO professionals who take the label.

Hard and fast rules for what constitutes an industry analyst may work on paper, but they rarely hold up in the marketplace. Behind closed doors, tech decision makers and vendor AR teams alike regularly debate the criteria for what constitutes an industry analyst.

I think the conversation about what’s an analyst — the debate itself — is the answer.

Instead of aiming for one rock-solid definition that fits all analysts all the time, we can make deciding who’s in and who’s out part of an ongoing process. Each of us can make it our own process. Involve our customers and supply chain partners. Involve our salesforce. Revisit our assumptions, criteria and earlier judgements in a fluid never-ending process.

From an execution standpoint, this only works if we ask the tough questions regularly. We can’t wait for a decision event or a crisis to ponder whether someone is, or is not, an industry analyst.

Popularity: 3%

Market influence is earned, not appointed. Yet, I’ve got to believe that Aneesh Chopra, recently appointed as the first CTO of the United States, is going to become a force of influence very quickly. And I’m looking forward to hearing him speak next week at the Churchill Club.

Most of the government tech influencers are people advising on government tech spending, government tech purchasing processes and tech-related regulatory and legal matters.

Mr. Chopra presents a new possibility in the role of government as a force exerting influence on the tech industry and as a target for influencer relations.

Check out details and costs here. Let me know if you’ll be there too. Would love to connect.

Popularity: 1%

Don Bulmer, the SNCR-award winning head of influencer relations at SAP, is forming an informal think tank project on social influence, and in particular, best practices for social influence. He’s issued an open invitation to participate and contribute content.

He’s outlined an ambitious agenda. In his words,

“As I think about this I am inspired to look more deeply at how social media has affected the dynamics and rules of ’social influence’ across a number of areas of society (business, politics, philanthropy/giving, personal productivity/advancement, etc.). To understand how the phenomena has affected the behaviors and motivations of people for greater benefit and activism.”

I’m in. Looks like a good opportunity to ponder influencer dynamics beyond the business setting and to do it in the company of great minds. Get the scoop at his blog. Or if you work inhouse on the corporate side, consider collaborating in concert with the Influencer Marketing & Influencer Relations Group at LinkedIn.

Popularity: 1%

Those of us who watch the watchers tend to use phrases like “the analysts”, “the media”, “the integrators”, “the bloggers”, “the academics”, and so on.  In most cases, we use these phrases simply as short hand.  We know that there are few common denominators uniting the people in these positions.  However, that’s not the message we send to our colleagues and clients when we use these terms.

And perhaps no one is more sensitive to this misrepresentation than the people we’re talking about.

A Twitter exchange this morning with @dale_vile and @NaomiHi reminded me of the importance of being — at times, at least — a bit more articulate, a bit less concise.

Popularity: 1%

ZDNet blogger Paul Greenberg ran a poll last week asking who his readers trust most — analysts, journalists, institutional analysts, bloggers, others — “when it comes to a good, clean honest look at the enterprise technology industry… especially around traditional and social enterprise software (CRM, ERP, social network platforms) and technologies associated with it”.

With 171 votes to date, the most popular answers are “Ventana Research” (18%), “I don’t trust analysts” (16%), and Gartner (13%).

At least a few readers took issue with Paul mixing analysts such as Gartner with the likes of journalists, bloggers and institutional analysts. I agree with Paul in this instance. The traditional “analyst” role is part and parcel of the work performed by many journalists and bloggers. Plus, the overlay with institutional analyst reports is just as strong today as at any time in the past.

As I noted in the comments to Paul’s post, informed decision-makers bet on the jockey, not the horse. The results would be different if the poll presented a dozen enterprise analysts and journalists rather than company names like Gartner, Forrester and Frost & Sullivan.

As an aside: It looks as though Ventana put some effort into turning out their voters. It’s too bad they don’t work for the state of California. We could have used them for last week’s special election.

Popularity: 1%