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RSSWhat is influence?
"That's the million dollar question," Duncan Watts, professor of sociology at Columbia University, and an outspoken critic of influencer and viral marketing, told me a few months back.
It was also the ultimate question this week at an Edelman roundtable, where I gathered with a small group of respected thinkers from diverse disciplines to tackle the issue in online environments.
With the rise of individual voices and the eroding effectiveness of mass marketing techniques, it's no wonder that so many marketing and communications disciplines are enamored with cracking the code on influence. Specifically, influence among people.
So let's address the core question: What is influence? According to Oxford, influence has a number of related definitions: 1. The power or ability to affect someone's beliefs or actions. 2. A person or thing with such ability or power. 3 The power arising out of status, contacts, or wealth. 4 The power to produce a physical change.
For better or worse, I've seen marketing and communications professionals tackle all these definitions of influence from a variety of angles in recent months. Here are just a few, which range from elementary and practical, to academic:
Influence Identification: Can it be identified? Can it be measured? Can it be harnessed? Has nature determined any given person more influential than another? Or are there specific variables that ultimately determine influence, such as popularity, reach, expertise, trust, willingness to speak, history, or association?
Group Influence: What are the influence dynamics of groups? How do they differ from individuals? Are cohesive groups really more influential over their members? What brings them together and inspires them to act? How are people influenced by the cognitions and attitudes of others in their social group?
Emotional Impact On Influence: How do emotions affect the ability of one to influence or be influenced? Are happy people more likely to influence, while sad people are more likely to be influenced? How much is primal and in our subconscious?
Contextual Impact: How much does context or familiarity matter for influence to occur? As Jeff Jarvis noted at Edelman's recent roundtable on online influence, it wasn't necessarily his influence that sparked Dell Hell. It was the fact that his experience struck a chord with the pain of thousands of other customers across the Internet. Which then begs the question: Does influence behave differently online versus offline?
Influence of Algorithms: How do algorithms -- particularly in Web services -- influence people? Does Google influence by defining what people see and where to focus attention? Do search-based "meme trackers" like Techmeme or BuzzTracker have inordinate influence versus other information sources? What about social-voting sites like Digg or Del.icio.us? Do algorithms cultivate the influence of individual people?
Influence Application: Can influence really inform marketing communications strategy to achieve higher performance? Does it make better sense to segment and market to those who are most influential, or those who are most easily influenced? Or is it a mix of both? Can we influence the influencers, or are we limited to simply observing and reacting to their actions and ripples? Are these even the right question when applying influence to marketing strategy?
With all the attention around influence, and many unanswered questions, what we need most is more practical testing, tied to specific marketing objectives and applications. The marketer's Holy Grail of influence is the ability to recognize patterns and optimize outcomes -- whether for advertising, media-planning, public relations, word-of-mouth marketing, etc. Without question, influence often rides on nothing more than spontaneity. However, deeper understanding will lead to bets and actions with more favorable odds.
Is influence part of your marketing strategy?
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Think of your own decisions and I suspect you'll find that you have a large pool of potential influencers who float in and out of your decision making process; different when you're buying a car than finding a doctor in a new town.
Influencers, I believe, are banks of information (could be Uncle Herb, or The Motley Fool) which someone believes they can trust. If you agree that influencers are info-banks then the way to marshall influence is to continuously feed quality data to the influencer to keep him/her/it ahead of the info curve.
I think.
There are, were and will be (all tenses from the simple present to the more intense future pluperfect) multi award winning and decades old memorable ads which were discontinued because they didn't sell product. Then there are (tense etc.) the blah and bland which sells volumes. See influence connections.
What influences the cheering on of YouTube splat winners without financial gains from content up-loaders? And ow deeply do YOU want what's left of your privacy and measure of humanity algorithmed? And if you can algorithm everything scientifically and exactly pin-pointed, does it mean the reasons for religious idols be able to be discovered, exposed and targeted? How far are the searchers for influence going to take it to influence? What is real and what is influencially targeted? How much do YOU want who to know about what influences you? Remember, all of those who devise the abilities to define, discover and congregate the information are not the ones who use it. Then after listening to Kenradio yesterday and their noting of Rupert Murdock's Fox programming (albeit many great programs) philosophy of carpet bombing marketing makes one think more about influence.
Nothing is free; nothing is stagnating. Eveything is influenced and influences.
I just posted an article titled "What are the factors?" and you can read it at http://jayderagon.com/blog/?p=309