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.

the big idea:
A profiled group of thousands of Canadian tastemakers, trendspotters, opinion leaders, experts, social ringleaders and grassroots celebrities - essentially, the people that influence what the other people buy, think and do. In a connected world, you need these people. Now with more community features, web functionalities, expanded campaign slots and customized content

the benefits:
- Opportunity for clients to build brands/launches with an influential member group
- Word of Mouth campaigns/influencer seeding
- User-generated programs
- Insight and research programs
- Brand experience/VIP events
- Promoting base Agent Wildfire stand alone communities or campaigns
- Engage influencers on a more cost effective and time-efficient basis
- Build an opportunity to for a uniquely Canadian, portfolio-wide category exclusivity

scope:
- Geography - National
- Timing - Third quarter 2010
- Scale - 10s, 100s, or 1000s of influencers engaged

the right clients:
- a natural opinion leader audience
- a new launch, audience or claim
- a need for credibility, authenticity or pre-seeding
- a grassroots approach or complement to a mass campaign
- a need to build or change perception

url:
www.theinfluencers.ca

contact:
Agent Wildfire - Canada’s Word of Mouth Experts www.agentwildfire.com 416-255-4500

I keynoted an opening presentation with an auditorium of 200 marketers in Toronto at Marketing Magazine’s conference “Engaging Influencers” this week.

Given the reaction of the crowd, it’s about time this section of marketing was covered off.  You could tell for some, it was reinforcement of stuff that wasn’t getting nearly enough airplay in their offices, for others - you could see the pin drop and give consideration to an entirely different world out there beyond the scope of their current “marketing air wars”.

For another constituency, habits were so engrained that people were trying to fit what they were learning into what they already knew and practiced. Not an easy forcefit. My friend David Alston from Radian6 explained adroitly what this actually meant using a really clever metaphor of the “church of the community” - engaged brand owners and the “church of the audience” - mass marketing practitioners — worthy consideration for another post.

In my opening keynote, I covered off in the attached presentation:

- some of these people are not like the others - the parallels and proof that influencers exist

- our networks, white papers and new book - Wikibrands

- refuting Duncan Watts and supporting The Tipping Point

- how we should value these people differently

- a call to action - why we should care, the Marketing Divide, the power of a “person like me”

- the flipping on its head of the mass marketing model

- growth expectations for word of mouth #1 and individual components of the new marketing spectrum

- the stories of Mozilla Firefox and lululemon

- why influencers are so damn valuable

- RECS - the formula of influence - Reach x Exposure x Credibility x Suasion

- the inequality of Influencer participation

- the traits of an influencer - ACTIVESP

- 6 types of Influencers - their definition, motivations and profiling questions

- Crossing the Chasm - how each type of Influencer works in sequence to spread ideas

- the 36 motivations that spark Influencers to do stuff - the who (the audience), the what you do (the activity) and the what you are (brand/product), yes there are 36

- the six dos and don’ts of influencer marketing

- reinforcement that humans are social animals - engage, converse, relate - don’t brag, broadcast and conquer

- our contact page

As much as their were some good case studies presented at the conference, it made ourselves at Agent Wildfire have a little swagger in our step realizing just how up front of our industry we really are and what an incredible set of assets we offer our clients - a nice unexpected reinforcement.

Please share us your thoughts on the attached and stay tuned for three important Agent Wildfire influencer announcements and launches in the new year.

Attached you will find the 2009 Buzz Report, an inaugural research study that provides a pulsecheck on Canadian business leader’s response to the new landscape of marketing, media, customer experience and brand-building.

This advance report is based on 300 online survey responses from some of Canada’s top executive marketing, business, digital and communications leaders polled online from late 2008 and first half 2009.

Unique among research reports in Canada, the Buzz Report study takes a complete look at new marketing, media and customer-driven strategies & tactics; not just general macro spending trends or specific social media.

This report was generated by Canada’s leading grassroots marketing, media and research company Agent Wildfire (www.agentwildfire.com) and sent to you as a favoured colleague ahead of widespread release.

Formal release of study results will be launched on August 3, 2009.

Please feel free to share the results of the study with your audience(s).

Key Highlights of the Study:

- 79% of study respondents are optimistic about social media/word of mouth delivering value in their organizations

- 67% expect investment of money, time and resources in social media/word of mouth to grow in the coming year
- “Awareness, publicity and buzz” is the #1 stated objective for initiating social media/word of mouth initiatives
- Social networks, social media, mobile, user generated content and influencer marketing are predicted to have the biggest new media segment growth in the coming years
- 32% believe a conversation worthy idea/concept is the key attribute of word of mouth, the #1 ranked choice
- 38% believe communications/PR is the most accountable owner for social media/word of mouth in an organziation
- Measurement, lack of budget and loss of control were considered the biggest obstacles to adopting social media/word of mouth
- Lack of authenticity, lieing and not creating two-way dialogue were considered the biggest sins of current practitioners
- 83% strongly agree/agree that agencies need to reinvent themselves to stay relevant in this
climate
- 59% believe user generated content/social media is a bigger benefit vs. 25% believe it as a bigger threat to their business
- 52% track content generated from social media and word of mouth, most other measures are tracked by less than half of the respondents polled
- 70% of people do not necessarily agree that Facebook will be the dominant social network in 3 years

If you want to interview the author of the study Sean Moffitt or get supporting assets, graphs or visuals, please send an email to jasmine@agentwildfire.com .