Demystifying The Influence Economy – Part I
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Recently, with the explosive growth of social media (e.g Facebook garnering 300 millions users worldwide and Technorati reporting that the number of blogs indexed is doubling every month), the population of social media experts has also increased pervasively. In industry mixers, people flash you business cards that include the term “social media”, and more and more people’s LinkedIn profile titles are “social media expert” or “social media consultant”. As Louis Gray points out in his blog “Social Media Experts are the New Webmasters” , social media experts still can’t make a living on this skillset alone, (with the exception of some prolific bloggers).
So, what is the opportunity cost of doing social media? If you spend so much time on social media, can it help you pay the bills?
In the recent Future of Influence Summit held at San Francisco, one of the many interesting topics discussed was the “business model for influence”. Some intriguing issues were raised in a panel on Influence and Reputation – such as that Influence (i.e. social media influence) would be a currency for trade in the future.
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There were heated debates at the Summit around what exactly is influence? What are the best ways to measure influence? Without agreeable measurements, you won’t be able to trade influence as a currency. One quick and easy measurement that some of the panelists spoke of was the number of social media connections (e.g. Twitter followers or Facebook friends). However, this measurement was heatedly contested as a flawed measurement because many Twitter and Digg users have gamed the system through scripting, spamming, and through reciprocal follower-ship. Therefore the calls-to-action disseminated through these phony followers seldom produce any results of significant value. Chris Brogon’s “Trust Agent” that, on average, human being’s authentic online connection is about between 100-200 connections; Hence, some people only have a couple hundredgenuine followers but they command trust among those followers and thus their voices bring up volumes, compel actions, and effect changes.
Among the panelists, Brain Solios played the devils advocate in the panel. He brought up the provocative point that nobody among the panelists actually know exactly what influence is; his view is that influence doesn’t depend on social media; it has existed as long as language has existed and has nothing to do with social media connections. Influence is the power of persuasion: some people or some pieces of content are persuasive, and they compel actions and effect changes. On the other hand, some others are no. In otherwords,notall content is created equal.
As a member of the audience, I had the benefit of collecting a wealth of fascinating nuances about influence. In my view, everyone hits some (but not all) aspects of influence; these viewpoints can co-exist without being mutually exclusive.
Ultimately, influence is as complex as the taste of wine; and the economy of influence can learn from the evolution of the wine business, where a few agreeable functions govern wine making and pricing.
Here is why:
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Wine, of course, is not just wine. The shades of quality, price, color, sweetness, dryness, and flavor among wines are so many that you can consider “wine” a whole world of beverages rather than a single product.
Whatever your notion of wine is – and even if that changes with the seasons, the foods you’re preparing, or how much you like the people you’ll be dining with – wine is something that’s in constant experimentation.
Influence resonates with wine in many ways; for example in that theinfluencibility of a message depends on its packaging, the timing of the message, the context and the media with which the message is delivered, whom it is delivered to, and who delivers it;
So, the concept of influence is an ecosystem, and not a single, stand-alone element. Influential measurements consist of “persuasion”, “connections” and “authenticity/credibility”
(to be continued)
