I think influence runs in tinier circles. I dont really look to a celebrity to tell me which makeup to buy, like I dont look for an online big blogger to tell me a stroller they love. I look to my personal group of friends and within that, those people influence me. trisha
SqueakyK
· 9 months ago
Ah Yes... you may look to your network of friends and be influenced by them... but who are they influenced by? The influence chain can be various lengths, especially in our info overloaded lives.
micah
· 9 months ago
Whats interesting is influence is really a 1:1 phenomenon. One person influences one person. But, on average an "influencer" will influence decision 1:9, meaning that they will convince 9 other people to do/say/feel what they do.
Think of voting as an example. A small amount of people influence a large amount of people to vote in a certain way.
apowerpoint
· 9 months ago
I often define influence in a decision as a function of the trust placed in the source and what the recommendation is. In short hand: Influence = f(Trust, Brand Charge); an idea very similar to the thoughts here. Yet Trust seems to have the same issues as Influence - just what do we mean? So maybe we can define that term further: Trust = f(Experience, Relevance). Trust increases when you have a history of good experiences with a source. It also increases when you perceive the source as being very relevant. Breaking it down even further: Experience = f(History, Frequency, Willingness). Relevance = f(Expertise, Bias, Timeliness). So for a purchase decision there are six components to consider before we even consider what is being said about a brand. People with whom we've interacted for a while go to the head of the list; might explain why social media is so important to understand. Now, to complicate things: We potentially separate network for each decision. But they are measurable.
micah
· 9 months ago
perhaps. I think that you are over complicating trust. Trust is really the development of an expectation. Its the creation of consistency. "I trust that you will always do X, when I say Y."
apowerpoint
· 9 months ago
Agree that trust relates to expectation; trying to understand how that expectation is formed creates the basis for implementing programs. Trust is the result of a sequence of helpful events over a period of time that help make a decision. Therefore marketers need to be in this for the long term.
StevePole
· 9 months ago
"Now that we have defined Influence mathematically" -sorry micah, but you've done anything but define influence mathematically. The very fact that your equation contains "trust^2" is laughable, you fail to explain the numeric value of one "trust", so how on earth would I square it!?
Klaus Holzapfel
· 9 months ago
This article sums up some of the problems that are easily beeing overlooked: What if you have that huge numeric follower base but really don't have anything to add to the conversation.
I believe many people do add to the discussion(s). But in many events they are not concider major influencers online because they refuse to follow the rules and make enough noise about themselves in order to be heard.
Your definition of influence and your take on personal branding belong into the 101 of social media.
Celeste
· 9 months ago
Agreed. Just because you have a big mouth does not mean people are listening to you.
Don Bartholomew
· 9 months ago
Interesting reading...couple of points. You have not defined Influence mathematiclly by your equation, you have defined it somewhat subjectively. Have you demonstrated some sort of mathematical validity to the equation?
When going from equation to metrics you lose me. Which of the metrics correspond to Personal Brand? Which to trust? Which to anything in the equation?
Rather than spending all our time coming up with equations for mythical online Influence, we would be better served IMO if we attempted to measure actual audience influence (i.e. have they been influenced?) which is an outcome/audience effect. Trust can also be measured with primary research. You can't gain true understanding and insight using only web analytics, true audience research is required.
micah
· 9 months ago
Don, great points. The mathematical formula is really just an explanation of the components of influence and how they interact with one another. Brand, Trust and Expertise are the only components of influence. In addition the squaring of trust is important because trust is the single largest influencer on influence. If you dont trust someone, they have little to no influence.
Yet, each measure is subjective and individual, which circles back to the concept that influence is truly a 1:1 activity.
The individual metrics are measurable. If one were to believe that those are the metrics that influence is comprised of. In that case, each is measurable, and therefore you could come up with an influence scoring mechanism that could provide insight into whether a particular person was (or was not) influential online.
If you're interested in the results, there's a place to enter your email address for a raw report of the stats.
شات
· 9 months ago
Yes i totally agree
The idea is, some times you get influenced without even feeling it. just with time you will find your thinking different way.
This is a great article.
iPhone
· 9 months ago
I think you can claim a certain amount of influence for your self with this article. Well written thanks.
paulmerrill
· 9 months ago
I agree with Jim - this was a great presentation at Wordcamp. I wish more of the humor there showed in this post! (Micah, you're hilarious. And you have the ability to mix that with some really solid content. That's a rare mix.)
TimothyJ
· 9 months ago
I agree with apowerpoint here. You have to delve further into what trust means in order to better quantify influence. Trust equal predictability of reaction. Trust is then built up by both interaction and authority (knowledge). Once an author is able to demonstrate authority by repeatedly posting on a topic and getting favorable response from others who have also demonstrated authority on the topic then influence is a graph analysis of an individual's influence and the influence of those influenced.
micah
· 9 months ago
Tim, sure - except trust equals predictability of ACTION not reaction. You will always do what I expect you to do when I feed you specific information or stimulus. I can trust babies to always poop their diapers after a big meal. They have no knowledge/expertise....right?
swag
· 9 months ago
Isn't some of this a bit self-contradictory? You go to lengths to spell out for influence: "can someone’s words (and/or video) make you think or do something?” And then you back off by itemizing a number of heuristics based on links, trust, track record, etc.
With regard to actual influence, most of those heuristics are irrelevant. Just as in physics where Work = Force * Distance, you can apply all the force in the world, but if your object doesn't budge it's all for naught. So what if you have 25k Twitter followers, 5k RSS feed readers, 10 years of experience posting in an online community, and all the trust in the universe. If you cannot influence a single person to alter their behavior in a specific constructive way, you've failed. You've merely achieved being someone everyone knows or likes to talk about, but has no relevance to their lives -- a sort of online Paris Hilton.
Furthermore, trust isn't everything either. Influence doesn't flow exclusively in the positive direction.
I think you approach something that could come close to approximating the potential for influence. But your heuristics really need to take things a step further to measure actual online influence. For example, Amazon.com is not going to care about my self-proclaimed "online influence" just because I've posted 5000 product reviews -- unless we can trace that I've been able to convert a non-purchaser into a purchaser or influenced a buyer's decision in a specific way.
Engago team
· 9 months ago
Great we have several posts rating 7 and even 8 on PostRank. Why do we rank so low on Technorati?(Authority 14 - ranking 450,000) Seems different measurement systems. Of course we prefer PostRank.
marta
· 9 months ago
Hi Micah I would add that influencing is a rather complex process with many uncontrollable factors, we can try through controllable factors though (i.e Twitter)
Phil Ryan
· 9 months ago
The article shows there are a number of ways of measuring influence and in part some of that measurement is based on subjective views. And there lies the problem, until there is a standard measurement you can’t compare like for like and really begin to analyze the bigger picture. We are currently developing a tool that will hopefully give users a way of applying the same criteria over time to build up a more accurate summary of how influential online media is and who they should be targeting.
Simon Fairbairn
· 9 months ago
If I remember rightly (it's been a while since I did any real math)
One trust = pi x expectation + (respect * hope) / hate * sqr rt of jealousy.
Therefore
Influence = (Personal Brand * Knowledge * (pi x expectation + (respect * hope) / hate * sqrt jealousy)^2)
I'm a little rusty, so correct me if you see anything wrong here.
Rob Domanski
· 9 months ago
Great article. What is really boils down to is finding metrics that analyze both the quantity and quality of one's influential reach in cybespace...
Micah never fails to educate me - definitely one of my go-to brains online :) Thanks for a thought provoking post and a new twist on considering influence.
Theodor (@skipet) tollefsen
· 9 months ago
This is a good example of a post where the comments are as (if not more) meaningful than the post itself. I totally agree with many of the comments who highlight that measuring influence is a bit more complicated.
In my experience clients to a larger extent question influence when its measured in traffic related numbers. It doesn't matter how much traffic or activity time one is able to generate if it doesn't lead to an increase in sales, OR gives the client added value to their brand so they can charge a larger premium because of differentiation.
In my opinion the sole focus on traffic related numbers from internet marketers an PR, often will come around an bite them in the tail...
At the end of the day: influence (at least from my perspective) boils down to the ability to convince (directly or indirectly) someone to purchase/pay a premium/join/have an opinion about.
The act of making someone look at something is not influence in my book.
Rob
· 9 months ago
My site's influence is great amongst the spambots...
Nick DiGiacomo
· 9 months ago
It's quite true that "people who are truly influential become conduits for human based filtering and content discovery within their communities..." And when blogs were fewer and the online crowd smaller, you could depend on those few strong voices to tell you who - or what - to trust.
But the scale and complexity of online interaction has overwhelmed the ability of any person - or group of people - to digest and process what goes on in individual online communities (e.g. Facebook or Twitter), let alone across the entire web and blogsphere. To measure influence online, you have to process not only original facts (news reports), but blogs (opinions) and comments and votes (opinions about opinions). And you can't just measure it at a moment in time - you have to track the ebb and flow (e.g. reposting and re-tweeting) to get a true sense of what's important and what isn't.
So - to accurately measure influence online, you have to collect the information from the communities (including the individual influencers), and then process it using some serious science. Not simple arithmetic or even standard statistics, but the kind of science that's used to filter spam and to detect fraud. If you can pull it off, you can detect trends and patterns (signals in the noise) that no single individual - or influencer - can.
We've been trying to do this for company reputations - marry an active online community with a processing engine that can take in the ebb and flow of stories, votes and comments about how companies treat their customers, employees, communities, the environment and society in general, and spit out quantitative scores and rankings - and then find hidden patterns of influence.
A few months ago we sought out to fine the most influential Canadians in social media, here's the list that we found - www.profectio.com/most-influential-in-social-media Depending on what a person is influential in makes a difference what tools can be used to measure.
Ziona Etzion
· 9 months ago
I think influence, at an emotional level, is governed by the atmosphere that you create around you.
It is your integrity, your style of communication, your ability to listen to the opinions of others (even diverse ones) and your ability to know how to respond.
@Nick DiGiacomo Interesting analysis
dijkstra
· 8 months ago
If you want to have influence on somebody, they firstly must know who is behind the nick!
Brad
· 8 months ago
influence - nice - great article - thank you - exponential snowball effect is where it is at....
The element of trust is not unique to Social Media, but I believe that the wise person realizes that not everyone is who they seem when they meet on Social Media. When you have face to face meetings, one can use body language as a way of gauging the speaker's sincerity. This is more difficult using social media. Using the tools mentioned above are ways to establish longevity, expertise and knowledge of the person, but you need to have interaction to better gauge sincerity and trust.
cool
· 5 months ago
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Rob Strobel
· 2 months ago
Hi Micah
Great post man. I would totally agree that social media can have a massive influence in either a good or bad way on a whole range to things. I have recently written about what I consider some of the negative effects of Social Media on our daily lives, and how easily we can become "addicted" and give it an unparalleled place in our lives in terms of time and effect. My post can be found at http://robert-strobel.com Have a look and let me know what you think. I'd appreciate your feed back. Thanks :o)
All Comments
trisha
Think of voting as an example. A small amount of people influence a large amount of people to vote in a certain way.
I believe many people do add to the discussion(s). But in many events they are not concider major influencers online because they refuse to follow the rules and make enough noise about themselves in order to be heard.
Your definition of influence and your take on personal branding belong into the 101 of social media.
When going from equation to metrics you lose me. Which of the metrics correspond to Personal Brand? Which to trust? Which to anything in the equation?
Rather than spending all our time coming up with equations for mythical online Influence, we would be better served IMO if we attempted to measure actual audience influence (i.e. have they been influenced?) which is an outcome/audience effect. Trust can also be measured with primary research. You can't gain true understanding and insight using only web analytics, true audience research is required.
Yet, each measure is subjective and individual, which circles back to the concept that influence is truly a 1:1 activity.
The individual metrics are measurable. If one were to believe that those are the metrics that influence is comprised of. In that case, each is measurable, and therefore you could come up with an influence scoring mechanism that could provide insight into whether a particular person was (or was not) influential online.
If you're interested in the results, there's a place to enter your email address for a raw report of the stats.
The idea is, some times you get influenced without even feeling it. just with time you will find your thinking different way.
This is a great article.
With regard to actual influence, most of those heuristics are irrelevant. Just as in physics where Work = Force * Distance, you can apply all the force in the world, but if your object doesn't budge it's all for naught. So what if you have 25k Twitter followers, 5k RSS feed readers, 10 years of experience posting in an online community, and all the trust in the universe. If you cannot influence a single person to alter their behavior in a specific constructive way, you've failed. You've merely achieved being someone everyone knows or likes to talk about, but has no relevance to their lives -- a sort of online Paris Hilton.
Furthermore, trust isn't everything either. Influence doesn't flow exclusively in the positive direction.
I think you approach something that could come close to approximating the potential for influence. But your heuristics really need to take things a step further to measure actual online influence. For example, Amazon.com is not going to care about my self-proclaimed "online influence" just because I've posted 5000 product reviews -- unless we can trace that I've been able to convert a non-purchaser into a purchaser or influenced a buyer's decision in a specific way.
Why do we rank so low on Technorati?(Authority 14 - ranking 450,000)
Seems different measurement systems.
Of course we prefer PostRank.
I would add that influencing is a rather complex process with many uncontrollable factors, we can try through controllable factors though (i.e Twitter)
One trust = pi x expectation + (respect * hope) / hate * sqr rt of jealousy.
Therefore
Influence = (Personal Brand * Knowledge * (pi x expectation + (respect * hope) / hate * sqrt jealousy)^2)
I'm a little rusty, so correct me if you see anything wrong here.
http://thenerfherder.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-to-measure-online-influence.html
In my experience clients to a larger extent question influence when its measured in traffic related numbers. It doesn't matter how much traffic or activity time one is able to generate if it doesn't lead to an increase in sales, OR gives the client added value to their brand so they can charge a larger premium because of differentiation.
In my opinion the sole focus on traffic related numbers from internet marketers an PR, often will come around an bite them in the tail...
At the end of the day: influence (at least from my perspective) boils down to the ability to convince (directly or indirectly) someone to purchase/pay a premium/join/have an opinion about.
The act of making someone look at something is not influence in my book.
But the scale and complexity of online interaction has overwhelmed the ability of any person - or group of people - to digest and process what goes on in individual online communities (e.g. Facebook or Twitter), let alone across the entire web and blogsphere. To measure influence online, you have to process not only original facts (news reports), but blogs (opinions) and comments and votes (opinions about opinions). And you can't just measure it at a moment in time - you have to track the ebb and flow (e.g. reposting and re-tweeting) to get a true sense of what's important and what isn't.
So - to accurately measure influence online, you have to collect the information from the communities (including the individual influencers), and then process it using some serious science. Not simple arithmetic or even standard statistics, but the kind of science that's used to filter spam and to detect fraud. If you can pull it off, you can detect trends and patterns (signals in the noise) that no single individual - or influencer - can.
We've been trying to do this for company reputations - marry an active online community with a processing engine that can take in the ebb and flow of stories, votes and comments about how companies treat their customers, employees, communities, the environment and society in general, and spit out quantitative scores and rankings - and then find hidden patterns of influence.
If you're interested, check out the site: http://www.vanno.com/ . And you can read about some of the influential patterns we've been able to uncover here: http://blog.vanno.com/index.php/2009/02/27/than...
Depending on what a person is influential in makes a difference what tools can be used to measure.
It is your integrity, your style of communication, your ability to listen to the opinions of others (even diverse ones) and your ability to know how to respond.
@Nick DiGiacomo Interesting analysis
thanks
plus size
Great post man. I would totally agree that social media can have a massive influence in either a good or bad way on a whole range to things. I have recently written about what I consider some of the negative effects of Social Media on our daily lives, and how easily we can become "addicted" and give it an unparalleled place in our lives in terms of time and effect. My post can be found at http://robert-strobel.com Have a look and let me know what you think. I'd appreciate your feed back.
Thanks
:o)
www.contentunltd.com