A mobile device influencer ecosystem

Just bought my new Blackberry last week.

Blackberry Curve

The influencers on my decision include (in no particular order):

Scott (Influencer50 sales director and Nokia fan);

Nick (Apple fan);

my brother-in law (gadget freak);

various salespeople in Vodafone, Carphone Warehouse and O2;

Stephen Fry;

GSMArena;

my previous experience with two previous Blackberries;

Google (provider of two essential applications: search and maps); The Geek Squad (BlackBerry technical support); random people using Blackberries and other devices on the train; ease of migration from my current phone; Carphone Warehouse sending me a text with a heads-up on the fact that my current contract was expiring; my son’s desire to have a cool dad with the latest phone; and probably others I’ve forgotten.

Not all influencers point in the same direction, and some are plainly opposed. Hence, not all influencers were successful in persuading me to their opinion. Such is the way of influence.

Interestingly, not on the list are Apple and Nokia, who didn’t get my business, and Blackberry, who did. Indeed, I’m not sure RIM even know who I am or that I’ve been a customer for four years.

I don’t mind RIM not knowing me. But I think they should know what and who influenced me.

Other notable non-influencers are price (they all cost roughly the same), and features (they all do roughly the same things that I deem necessary).

Why fifty influencers?

You’d be amazed how often I get asked, “So, why Influencer Fifty?” Easy answer: because we identify a minimum of fifty influencers for our clients as a kick-start to their influencer community programs.

But why fifty? What if we only want 25? Or what if we want 100?

It turns out that, for most B2B markets, fifty is the optimal number of people to reach out to, to manage appropriately, and to draw some conclusions from. Too few influencers, and you risk identifying just the obvious influencers: analysts and journalists. Too many, and you’ll get swamped: few organisations can appropriately manage more than fifty influential individuals.

Often, our clients will know some of the influencers we identify (though they usually don’t know their relative ranking). So we typically provide the top 75 or 80 influencers, so that they still have 50 or so individuals that are new to them.

In four years we’ve never had a client that has known more than half their influencer community. Usually it’s 10-15% – that’s between 5 and 8 influencers known to a vendor organisation.

Why you can’t guess your influencers

We often play a game with our clients. Write down the names of the top ten influencers on your market (or segment). If you guess correctly you don’t pay us.

It’s a safe bet – we’ve never encountered a close guess. But why?

I think there are two possible reasons. Firstly, most people have never thought about the question before. Although intuitively they know that their prospects are being influenced by a range of individuals, they’ve never considered who these people might be.

The second reason is that when considering influence, they use one, or maybe two, dimensions to measure influence. The most common ones used are frequency and market reach/awareness. Sometime they’ll use connectedness, especially if they’re considering the influence of bloggers.

The problem is that influence is multi-dimensional. Currently we use four dimensions of influence, and are piloting a further four (from which we expect two to be practical and consistently measurable).

It also explains why Bill Gates and Steve Jobs rarely turn up on our influencer rankings, along with the other obvious CEO of top companies. These individuals may influence industry trends and directions, but they rarely affect real decisions at the coal face.

More on SAP’s approach to influencer relations

Don Bulmer at SAP shares his experience of establishing an Influencer Relations program. I esepecially like the engagement model and the segmentation (with revenue opportunity) of influencer groups.

Don’s diagram of this is here.

A list worth reading

I hate lists. Especially top 10 or top 50 lists. Those pointless (endless) TV shows of 50 best comedy/horror/soap/movie/. Top 50 CIOs, top 50 management gurus, etc, etc, etc.

Typically such lists are poorly researched guesstimates noting the bleeding obvious people, in some sort of non-obvious order.

But consider this list. I confess I’m not an environment zealot, but I found the people identified in the list really interesting, primarly because I’d never heard of most of them. Besides the obvious Al Gore and prominent politicans, there is an eclectic mix of campaigners, artists, religious leaders, journalists, scientists and farmers. It’s the mix of backgrounds and perspectives that give the list its credibility. Clearly the result of deep research.

So it is with any worthwhile list. While researching influencers for our clients we often find that potential influencers don’t appear on any ‘obvious’ list. Yet their influence, once discovered, is clear.

We’ve often looked for shortcuts through the research process, and have examined methods for automating influencer identification, but they all fall short in thoroughness and completeness. There’s no substitute for deep research.

WOM Conference blog posts

I’ve contributed some posts to the WOM Marketing Forum conference blog – I’m speaking at the event this Wednesday.

The posts can be read here, along with contributions from other speakers. Interesting stuff, and several posts examine the relationship between WOM and Influencer identifcation & engagement.

WOM conference speaking gig

I’m presenting at the World Advertising Research Center (WARC) Word-of-Mouth conference on 16th January. Looks to be a good line-up, with Emanuel Rosen (The Anatomy of Buzz) as the headliner. Paul Marsden (Collaborative Marketing and Net Promoter Score fan) and Ivan Palmer (WOM advocate at Wildfire) are also there, together with a bunch of wom experts. Looking forward to meeting the crowd.

I’m talking on “Working with Influencers – Connecting with the Customers that Count.”

If you can’t make it to the conference to hear the presentation, here’s the short version:

• All customers count.
• Find out who influences them.
• Market through influencers to customers.

Simple, really – you should try it.

“We can’t find out who our influencers are…”

Reuters reports that US PR companies are struggling to identify social media influencers, because they are using criteria out of step with the social networks being influenced. PR companies think quality of content, relevance and search engine rankings are important in influencing social media users. Social media users in fact value participation levels (e.g. number of comments), frequency of posting, and name recognition of the individual.

Two key points here:

Firstly, PR is out of step with its target audience, and the research by Society for New Communications Research is therefore very timely. Importantly, PR firms under-estimate the value of engagement in influencing through social media.

Secondly, I think the study shows that influence itself is a social phenomenon, whether exerted through social media or via more traditional channels. A great way to engage with your target audience is to engage with its influencers, but this has to be done in an appropriate social context.

That’s why establishing communities of influencers works well. We say often at Influencer50 that influencers love to influence, but they also love to interact with other influencers – that how they get much of their influence in the first place. Firms that facilitate this interaction are much valued – like the CMO Council.

The "Wave" is picked up by Paul Gillin

I’m flattered that Paul Gillin, author of The New Influencers, has linked to the post on influencer roles.

I’ve just read The New Influencers. I highly recommend it to anyone struggling to understand the influence of social media (which is most of you, and me too!). If Naked Conversations got you started on blogging, then The New Influencers will make you see just how important bloggers can be.

Thanks, Paul.

Daft question #3 – Are bloggers influential?

I get asked this all the time – are bloggers influential?

The only polite response I use is to answer with a question – “Influential on whom?”

In a client project we did earlier this year, there were zero influential bloggers (on UK CIOs in large enterprises).

In a case study for the book, there were dozen of influential bloggers (on tech-focused database administrators).

So the next time you see this sort of nonsense, ask yourself “Influential on whom?”

Then worry about how you might measure influence (clue: it’s not the number of links…).