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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I am impressed with the interactive section on the “People Behind The People” published with the 2009 Time 100. It’s an indicator that even a mass consumer audience is interested in learning about “behind the scenes” influencers.
Time did a great job slicing and presenting this content to boot, given their audience.
It’s a reminder for all of us that with a little creativity we can make our work with influencer relations captivating to our own audiences.
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Voices arguing that blogger popularity does not equate to influence lost a little more ground this week. A new ad network promises to deliver influential blogs to media buyers. My reaction is a mix of cheering and concern.
What’s up: San Francisco-based BuzzLogic has launched its BuzzLogic Ad Targeting service. Essentially, the service enables companies to identify and place ads on the most popular (linked) blogs on a given topic. The ad service is based on BuzzLogic’s social media monitoring solution for PR.
I cheer because many high-profile bloggers need more and better revenue options. Most find out the hard way that advertising revenues from Google Ads do not trend upward with any kind of reliability. Meanwhile, sponsors can be hard to find and harder to sign. Even influential bloggers like Tom Foremski speak candidly about the challenges of growing new media revenues.
I cringe because there’s been so much controversy over the impact of pay-for-play on the reputation of industry analysts. There’s a deep-rooted perception that vendor revenues taint analyst objectivity. What’s to stop the same sort of backlash from tarnishing the most popular bloggers?
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