Defining Influence

Recently i've been trying to get my head around 'influence', what it means, how it works, how to identify it and how to harness it.


Influence is defined as the power to affect, control or manipulate something or someone; the ability to change things such as conduct, thoughts or decisions; An action exerted by a person or thing with such power on another to cause change.

To have influence or to be influential is envied by many and possessed by few.

To harness influence and to utilise it for the benefit of marketing and selling brands is the latest craze within the advertising world. Promises of brand advocates, highly connected networks of people, viral effects and 'sell to a few to reach a mass' are being bounced around meeting rooms and agency offices worldwide.

It's a great concept. A fantastic new, exciting approach and, if done correctly, it's an even better achievement.

It's something that i desperately want to understand more about so that i too can utilise is for my clients.

So i've been doing some research and have uncovered a confusing disconnect between agencies, clients, softwares and systems as to what they understand influence to be.

There are several schools of thought all of which are wildly different.

Definition 1: Influence can be identified via the volume and credibility of links. Endorsers: Google, VML SEER

This approach is most famously used by Google. Their spider technology uses links to help them ascertain the order of their search results in response to a query. The top results are usually determined using a mixture of content (keywords, meta tags etc) and the number of 'credible' websites that link to that content.

For social media monitoring tool, VML SEER, they define an influential piece of content, blogpost or comment based on how many websites (credible or not) link to that content.

From my perspective this is a very limited approach.
Links don't equal readers, links don't equal credibility and links don't equal consequence.

Definition 2: Influence can be identified via the volume and velocity of content

Endorsers: Nielsen Buzzmetrics

Buzzmetrics is one in particular that i found difficult to get my head around.

They measure influence based on the volume and velocity of content.

Therefore if a blogger writes a new post everyday they would judge them as being more influential than a blogger who writes once a week.

This method doesn't take into account whether or not there is actually anyone reading the blogposts, how much traffic, site dwell time etc.

You could have a blogger (lets call him Ted) who writes a new post every half hour. He's been blogging for 2 years but as yet, no one has visited his blog or read his content, poor Ted. But does that really make Ted influential? I think not.

Of course Nielsen do offer a site measurement service so you can cross reference traffick, dwell time and links with volume and velocity of content - the only problem is that it's not part of the buzzmetrics package and you'll be paying a hefty retainer on top to get access to it!

Definition 3: Influence can be identified via number of friends or followers

Endorsers: Most Agencies i know of....

Influence, in many cases, is mistaken for quantity rather than quality.

An influential person may be incorrectly defined by the number of followers they have on Twitter or the number of friends they have on Facebook.

But to sense-check this let's get realistic.

I am following circa 400-500 people on Twitter. I don't read every single tweet. In fact, i have a group set up on Tweetdeck called 'favourites', in this group i have placed the people whom i am most interested in and whose tweets, links and questions i will check out or respond to.

Not everyone has a specific group set up but they do have those who they are following for the sake of following and those who they actually pay attention to.

You will most likely respond to or read the tweets of a core group of people. Therefore this de-bunks the quantity versus quality myth.

Now for Facebook, we've all got friends who we keep in touch with on a regular basis and those who we last saw at nursery school when we were 3 and they were busy blowing milk out of their noses. Again quantity doesn't equal quality of relationships which impacts the attention people pay to us and the attention we give to others.

Definition 4: Influence can be identified via a mixture of links, volume & quantity

Endorsers: Radian 6, Systems plus human analysis

Some switched on clever people have woken up to the fact that systems and automated processes don't work quite as well as human intervention They define influence based on a number of different elements such as links, readership, page traffick, followers, friends, blog comments, re-tweets etc combined with human analysis.

This system is not 100% automated but it does utilise tools to get the base data which is then evaluated by a real person who uses a bit of common sense to translate the information into something slightly more intelligent and useful.

Again it's not perfect because it's subject to individual perception and what they see as being influential which could be different from one agency to another...

Definition 5: Influence can be identified via self classification

Endorsers: Contagious Communications

This bizarre methodology relies on influencers to identify themselves!

Essentially Contagious ask participants to identify themselves as 'influential' in the online world and then offers them incentives such as points, coupons or mini-prizes to take part in a campaign to promote one brand or another to their online friends (think Pure Profile but for the social media landscape).

There are so many things wrong with this approach i don't know where to start..

I actually signed up and identified myself as influential and gave them my age, interests and location..

Now i get a few emails a week asking me if i'd like to help promote this product or film which are completely outside of my areas of interest and just annoying.

Plus i don't see how the same person can be influential in so many different areas such as film, FMCG, service sector....it's just odd.

If you don't believe me check it out here: http://www.contagiousnetwork.com.au/

So that concludes my research for now and i'm still no clearer as to what the best course of action is.

My next project is going to be uncovering the possibility and take-up of psychometric testing online to identify influencers. After all, what makes you influential in the real world makes you influential in the virtual world no?