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‚Äô 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: 7%
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‚Äôs plans get more firms to talk about influence, then fine. But I fear that it will dumb influence down to a few ‚Äòmagic‚Äô 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.
Popularity: 4%
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.
Popularity: 8%
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: 5%
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.
Popularity: 2%
