Spreads Like Wildfire

Social networks have not diminished the power of the influencer, they have revealed it.

Consider a few stats:

On LinkedIn - people with +$200K income are 7 times more likely to have +150 connections

On Twitter - only 0.7% of twitterers are followed by 1,000 people

On Wikipedia - 1.7% of the audience publishes 70% of the articles, 0.7% of the audience edits 50% of the artcicles

On Digg - the top 100 Digg users post 56% of the content

In the blogosphere - high authority bloggers post 300x more frequently than low authority bloggers

In life - Influencers have 2x as many social connections and get involved in 2x as many social activities

Face facts - some of these people are not like the other.

And as an organization stretched for time and resources, you need to find out who these people are and get them on your side.

From what pulpit does the influencer’s power govern? There’s like many individual reasons why these people are so powerful but people tend to worship them from their 4 core altars of powers (RECS):

Reach - whether it’s because of hard work, a bit of luck, reputation or charming personality (and usually all 4), these people have many many people who like them, respect them, follow them, fan them - don’t ever let anybody tell you that reach or scale isn’t important when you’re trying to get a message started and going and also remember don’t discount real world reach because you can’t see it - remember more than 80% of conversations still happen real world away from their social network dashboard

Exposure - not only is the vast number of people that follow people but it’s also how broadly scattered that counts. The whole idea of “weak ties” suggests that the more different social circles you’re connected to, the better your message will jump across networks - from a digital standpoint that means, that they blog and I see them on Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Facebook and perhaps some other niches - noticing a wide range of interests and events attended is also an indicator of exposure-driven influence.

Credibility - so they have a lot of people, they also have a wide variety of people - who cares if no one listens to them? Do they have content that screams read me, do they state opinions people adopt with Oprah-like loyalty? Do they’re content rich posts and tweets get rebroadcasted? Do people go out of their way to get their opinions? Credibility takes shallow influence and makes it real and things like follower counts is one of the biggest mistakes in suggesting credibility (retweets, treackbacks and comments do have some merit though).

Suasion - by some magic force, these people get other people to do what they might not normally do. Do these people host events and people come out? Do these people recommend others and people act on their suggestions? Different than credibility, the force of “suasion” causes people to act.  It can be ambient suasion ( they post creative stuff that people react to) or direct (they make recommendations that curns reaction). As a lifelong beer marketer and word of mouth expert, I always suggested to my promotion teams - don’t sample just anybody - find me the guy/girl who is holding court at their table of 20 and is the one in charge of what pitcher of beer they drink. That’s suasion!

Next time, you are thinking about an influencer or grassroots outreach program, think to the power of RECS. Or simply contact Agent Wildfire about our award-winning influencer outreach programs.