Why Online Influencer Outreach is Overrated and How to Fix It Trying to convince online influencers to tweet, blog, instagram, or pin nice things about your company is the post-modern version of celebrity endorsement, but with less impact. Public relations firms and/or in-house communication apparatchiks take the same concepts and mechanics of celebrity endorsement and bring them online, using Klout scores in lieu of celebrity Q scores, and blogger ID software like Group High in place of Hollywood agents. The idea is that once drafted into the cause and compensated in some way, online influencers will spread the word in social media to their acolytes, increasing sales for the brand. But these programs often prove ineffective at driving behavior beyond social chatter. There are two reasons for this. Reasons Why Online Influencer Outreach is Overrated First , we tend to confuse audience with influence. I’m not suggesting that influencer outreach is useless or should be abandoned. The Two Dimensions of Online Influence Start with Advocacy
The Fast Influencer Myth Michael Wu, Ph.D. is Lithium's Principal Scientist of Analytics, digging into the complex dynamics of social interaction and online communities. He's a regular blogger on the Lithosphere and previously wrote in the Analytic Science blog. You can follow him on Twitter at mich8elwu. I was wondering what I was going to write about this week. Then I came across the Influence Project that was launched by Fast Company yesterday. I accidentally clicked on one of their links from my tweet streams, but quickly figured out that it was a link-bait with no actual substance. However, I must say that this influence project really has nothing to do with influence. This led me to think why are there so many deceptions around the search for the elusive influencers? The Marketing Influencers When Esteban Kolsky, Amber Naslund, Maria Ogneva, etc. speak of “influencers,” I believe they mean someone who can influence another’s decision process. The PR Influencers But wait, there's more! Conclusion
What is Influence, Really? – No Carrot, No Stick, From the lack of response and low kudos on my last post, I get the impression that you probably had enough big data for the time being. Since I’ve decided to rotate more frequently between different projects that I’m working on, I feel this is a good time to revisit the topic of influence and pick up where I left off on this fascinating subject. It’s been more than two years since I wrote about influence. Today, I’d like to continue the discussion about influence and look deeper into what influence really means. What is Influence? Despite the amount of discussion around influence on the web, I find that people have a general notion of what influence is, but can’t define it precisely. The act or power of producing an effect without apparent exertion of force or direct exercise of commandThe power or capacity of causing an effect in indirect or intangible ways : sway From these definitions, it is clear that influence is something that must have some effects on something else. Conclusion is
My Chapter on Influencers Michael Wu, Ph.D. is Lithium's Principal Scientist of Analytics, digging into the complex dynamics of social interaction and online communities. He's a regular blogger on the Lithosphere and previously wrote in the Analytic Science blog. You can follow him on Twitter at mich8elwu. Recently, there has been a lot of buzz around the term "influencer." This is partly due to the launch of Fast Company's Influence Project. Beside this project, there is another unrelated project with a very similar name: The Influencer Project, which was also launched around the same time. Since I’ve done quite a bit of research and written many blog posts on topics related to influencers, I thought it would be nice to collect these posts together in a single spot. The first set of four articles introduces a simple model of the influence process (or simply influence model). The next set of three posts is on the application of the influence model. Alright, that is what I’ve written on influencers so far.
Social Networks Influence 74% of Consumers' Buying Decisions With the holidays just around the corner, spending will increase and many consumers are turning to the Internet for help. According to a study by the digital marketing agency ODM Group, 74% of consumers rely on social networks to guide purchase decisions. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have allowed brands to effectively market to a wider audience. For consumers, these platforms allow easy access to brands, but also help to guide product decisions and purchases. On Twitter, 53% of consumers recommend companies or products in their tweets . The most effective platforms in terms of mobilizing consumers to talk about products are Facebook with 86%, followed by Twitter at 65%, blogs and reviews are tied at 55%, and videos come in last with 50%. In terms of listening, businesses use consumer insights in 80% of sales and merchandising decisions.
Finding the Influencers: Influence Analytics 2 Michael Wu, Ph.D. is Lithium's Principal Scientist of Analytics, digging into the complex dynamics of social interaction and online communities. He's a regular blogger on the Lithosphere and previously wrote in the Analytic Science blog. You can follow him on Twitter at mich8elwu. Last time, I introduced a very simple model of influence and outlined the basic ingredients that are required for successful WOM influence. Influencers on Social Media Channels In the real world, pretty much anyone can be an influencer, and the number of effective influencers is quite large compared to the number of potential targets. Some of the reasons are: Proficiency: The influencer may not be as effective or efficient when communicating through the particular social channel of interest.Incentive: The influencer may have no desire to share his knowledge through social media. Because influencer identification is the first step in any WOM and influencer marketing, this has been the focus of most marketers. 1.
Are all Influencers Created Equal? Dr. Michael Wu, Ph.D. is Lithium's Principal Scientist of Analytics, digging into the complex dynamics of social interaction and online communities. He's a regular blogger on the Lithosphere and previously wrote in the Analytic Science blog. You can follow him on Twitter at mich8elwu. Last week I presented a webcast with Prof Barak Libai and Sanjay Dholakia on the Holy Grail of WOM marketing. I presented one way of identifying influencers using Google's PageRankTM algorithm. As alluded to earlier, SNA provides numerous centrality measures that quantify the importance of individuals in a network. Degree centrality: measures how many connections a user has.Closeness centrality: measures how fast a user can reach the whole network.Eigenvector centrality: measures how reputable a user is.Betweenness centrality: measures how many critical diffusion paths go through the user. Therefore, influencers are not created equal!
The Missing Link of Influence: The Potential to In In my previous posts, I defined influence and discussed why brands don’t seem to understand digital influence. Today, we are ready to talk about the missing link in the influence industry. This article builds on the previous two, so I would recommend reviewing the following posts if you missed them earlier: What’s Wrong with the Current State of Influence Analytics? Last time we explained why nobody can actually measures real influence on social media. However, we also know that no actual influence occurs until the influencees produce a measurable action. It is partly because there are significantly fewer influencers than influencees, so it is much easier to collect, analyze, model, and compute the activity data from the influencer than from the influencees. However, a valid influence model must consider the influencees. The Big Missing Link of Influence So when does real influence take place? content relevancetiming (or temporal relevance)channel alignmentconfidence (a.k.a. trust) is
Stern | Research | Sinan Aral | New Method to Measure Influence & Susceptibility in Social Networks In a new paper, published today in Science, Sinan Aral, NYU Stern Assistant Professor of Information, Operations and Management Sciences, and his co-author Dylan Walker, a research scientist at Stern, present a new method to measure influence and susceptibility in social networks. Today, finding influentials is all the rage. Companies such as Klout are trying to measure “influence scores” for people in social media networks like Facebook and Twitter, and brands are using this information to target them with advertising. Beyond marketers, parents are interested in whether their children’s peers influence education outcomes; managers are interested in whether workers’ colleagues influence their productivity; and policymakers are interested in whether happiness, obesity and smoking are contagious, and if risky behaviors, such as drug abuse, spread as a result of peer-to-peer influence. To read the full paper, visit the Science website.
How To Seed A Viral Marketing Campaign The following is a guest post from Christopher Angus. Christopher runs Warlock Media, an SEO Company in Cotswolds, UK that delivers internet marketing campaigns to UK-based businesses and sectors. If you want to guest post here, please read the guidelines. Popular bloggers, smart companies and even media have designs on creating and then seeding viral content. Even the very best viral marketing or linkbait campaign content, whether it be a video, article or a game, will not do well without the right seeding. But before you think of seeding: a viral campaign needs to have the right characteristics in order to spread effectively at all. The biggest question you need to ask yourself before you create your campaign is ‘why would people want to spread this?’ Delivering humorGiving someone an ego boastBeing incredibly useful (or resourceful)Causing controversyPlaying on a memeBeing dramaticBeing provocative (but SFW)Evoking a smileSparking emotional engagement of some sort