Debate: Is finding influencers really all that?

I’ve been debating people lately about this.  To get a good discussion going, I am happy to take the contrary view and see where it goes.  At this point, I’m not sold on the importance of influencers.  My main premise is that right now, maybe 2% of companies are effectively leveraging social.  But almost every marketer I talk to these days is consumed with finding the influencers in their social presences.  Cart before the horse.  Getting ahead of your skis.  Pick your anecdote.

So yesterday I started openly debating this in the DIG area and decided to record a short Cinch on the subject.  In this Cinch, @gumboshowjoe and I debate this topic a little.  Please feel free to disagree with me in the comments, let’s keep this debate going!

8 Comments

  1. Adam Waid on November 5, 2010 at 1:46 pm

    So I agree that finding the “influencers” helps to spread the word. More so, those that are influencers tend to be the ones that help get the conversation going.

    So my question is, at what point does one cross over into being an influencer? 5,000 followers? 20 RTs/day? Also, if you focus ONLY on those that already have a large following you ignore those with a strong voice, but maybe not strong “following.”



  2. Gary Lee on November 5, 2010 at 1:59 pm

    Discovery and engaging with Influencers is not something new as you suggest. In Marketing, we’ve been doing this for years by uncovering who in the media is able to carry a message forward in the market. It’s what we’ve always called good journalism, and the good PR and marketing professionals have been able to produce huge results through earned media.

    What’s changed (of course) is the advent and explosion of social media, and a very real desire to find Influencers there. First, I agree with your assessment which you both agree to that # of followers (aka popularity) does not equal influence. There is of course a correlation, since one without any followers has no voice, but it’s not a 1:1 mapping. A rock star as an example can be wildly popular in social media, but have no real influence over my market of widget buyers.

    You point this out in your discussion where someone has to have “topical relevance” on a subject before they can really be an influencer.

    I believe that discovering Influencers begins FIRST with topical relevance. And then figuring out who within that cloud of topical relevance has the attention of the market you are trying to reach and the authority to do so.

    The challenge of course is HOW to discover these folks. How do you reliably find the influencers based on topics across not just social media, but also across blogs, articles, etc.

    At mBLAST, we’re really digging deep into this topic. It’s not 100% social media. It’s also traditional media, and blogs and social media. It’s discovering who online has influence. And it’s therefore a critical thing for marketing today to figure out.

    We’re putting the final touches on an Influencer application and will be sharing more details very soon. Follow us at @mblast and http://www.mblast.com.



  3. Tony Kinard on November 5, 2010 at 2:24 pm

    I would help to start off your conversation with specifying your definition of “Influencer”. For example, ‘Frequent Sharers’, ‘Influencers’ and ‘Celebrity’ are not mutually exclusive. That being said, just yesterday I saw these stats below regarding the sharing of news, which tends to support at least placing some strategic emphasis on those that will do the most to get your message out:

    CNN study found 27% of ‘Frequent Sharers’ (defined as those sharing at least six stories each week) were responsible for 87% of all news shared online.

    43% of peer-to-peer news sharing comes from social media networks and tools e.g. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, followed by email (30%), SMS (15%) and IM (12%).

    https://cnninternational.presslift.com/socialmediaresearch



  4. Jeff Hilimire on November 5, 2010 at 3:23 pm

    Great stats here on frequent sharers, thanks TK



  5. Drew Hawkins on November 5, 2010 at 4:18 pm

    At the risk of sounding like a fence-straddler, I agree with both parties in the debate on different things. Influencers are important provided a brand targets the appropriate influencers for their message. They help bring people to the table. However, they aren’t the keys to overall success. While they bring people to the table, engagement and quality of the brand/product is what keeps them them at the table.



  6. Jeff Hilimire on November 5, 2010 at 6:13 pm

    Fence-straddler!!!

    Just kidding. It’s hard to not straddle the fence on this one. Let me ask you this though, would you agree that very, very few companies are at a level of sophistication when it comes to their social efforts to even worry about influencers? That’s what annoys me the most, all this talk about influencers and barely anyone is ready to even think about that aspect of social.



  7. Tony Kinard on November 5, 2010 at 6:30 pm

    I certainly don’t think you’ll get much argument against the fact few companies have sophisicated social efforts. More than half of companies (of those who even have an effort) say they are using social media with no strategy at all, according to some studies (eg, https://goo.gl/DplkQ ). In pretty much the majority of my conversations with some major brands recently, people are shooting from the hip and have lost themselves in tactics without strategy – trial and error that produces mostly errors.



  8. Drew Hawkins on November 5, 2010 at 7:25 pm

    I see what you’re saying there and would agree that very few companies have achieved that level of sophistication. To be able to reach the right influencer, a company would have to have a pretty detailed social media/digital plan on who they plan to target and how. Without this information, tapping into an influencer would literally be a coin flip on effectiveness. Like @gumboshowjoe said, not all influencers are right for all audiences.



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