Lately, I’ve been reconsidering who I think are influencers in and on my business. There are those who you follow and hang on every word and there are those you watch from afar with admiration but caution.
Who we let influence us, both professionally and personally, says a lot about who we are. Are you easily swayed or does it take some research and work?
About a year and a half ago I wrote about how to measure someone’s social influence. In that article, I listed 10 ways to measure someone’s influence –
1. Number of Facebook fans
2. Number of Subscribers on Facebook
3. Number of Twitter followers
4. LinkedIn Endorsements & Recommendations
5. Look at engagement levels on their social media platforms
6. Google Them
7. Look at their Klout Score
8. Look at their Kred Score
9. Look at their PeerIndex Score
10. Go with your gut
Wow – I can’t believe I actually used to subscribe to all of that! As time goes on and we evolve professionally, our opinions change, and for me, how I now define social influence has changed as well.
To me, defining social influence takes more into account than numbers. Yes, numbers to play a part, but numbers can be deceiving. People buy fans, buy article placements, buy their way onto influencer lists. You have to take it all with a grain of salt and look at a larger picture.
Social Media Influence is seen as the influence one has over others when it comes to social media strategy and marketing. You see the same names pop up on all of the lists – Mari Smith, Neal Schaffer, Jeff Bullas, Gary Vaynerchuk, Mark Schaefer, to name a few. How did these guys end up as influencers? Well, first of all, it took time and energy. I don’t think any of them set out to be a big-name influencer (well, they may have, but they won’t admit it) however through their work, they now are.
Defining social influence incorporates more than numbers. For me, it’s based more on QUALITY over quantity. I could care less if you have 200,000 Twitter followers if you are not engaging with people and providing quality content. I would respect you more if you had 50,000 and was actively talking with your community and showing your true personality. Influence is about quality. Quality of content. Quality of conversation. Quality of who you are online. Let’s face it folks, thanks to social media MANY people have disguised themselves as people they are not. You shouldn’t have to peel back the layers to see who they really are.
So how am I defining social influence these days?
1. Quality over quantity.
What types of conversation are you having? Are you responding to comments, actually taking an interest in your community?
2. You face the bad with the good.
If you are truly a person of influence, you will have active critics. I see some social media “experts” run and hide when criticized and use vague Facebook statuses on their personal profile to get sympathy from their fans. True story – that happened to me. I constructively criticized something a so-called expert was doing. She did not respond to me directly, but through two vague Facebook statuses that directly referred to my critique. If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.
3. What others say about them.
I will Google them. I will look at their LinkedIn Recommendations. I want to see what other people are saying. If the masses are saying the same thing, then that gives you a pretty idea about the person.
4. Their following.
Yes, numbers do play a small part, but genuine influencers will have more than 100 people following them on any given social media platform.
5. What my intuition says.
Our gut feelings are hardly wrong. If you get the heebie-jeebies from or about them, run.
How do YOU define social influence? Everyone has their own way and no one way is right or wrong.
If you have someone who influences you in a big way, please share! I’d love to check them out 🙂
Gut instinct and perception is so important, I was talking to Brian Solis about this last year. After exchanging comments on someone’s blog on Sunday then Fruday actually meeting him in London 250 miles from my house and 1000’s from the Canadian blog we talked on. At the free event 100 seats but only 40 turned up. Many were there like peacocks suggesting their importance, i had none as they didn’t know me. Yet Brian recalled our conversation and we talked while the others missed the point wildly 🙂
Influence isn’t numbers, they can help show where people’s focus is. We should all build one by one, if we do that we have support. If we bus in our followers they don’t know whey they’re on the bus so won’t care about you like real people.
Check out Danny Brown [ http://dannybrown.me ] if you dn’t already know him, he simply talks back. not hard but so many don’t know why they should do that.
Thanks Mark! I will check Danny out!
It really does all come down to your gut instinct – it never does you wrong. Some people may seem on the up-and-up on the outside, but dig deeper and you’ll see their true self.
Absolutely, and i still can’t see any software being able to work as quick as we can. Especially as we can put together random facts and things which ‘we’ culd never think of being able to program into a computer. So good lck to anyone working on big data, it’s useable but people are the ones we need to talk to 🙂
I love, love, love how you went back and ‘corrected’ your own view/opinion. 😉
It’s amazing how much you can learn and grow in 18 months. I like this idea… I will have to go back and do the same on my own blog.
Thanks Dorien! I was pretty shocked at what I was advising back then!
This reminds me of one of the examples in the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell – the wargames example, where a “rogue” general beat the carefully analyzed strategy. Not exactly the same, but you probably get my point. Often times our “gut feelings” are more accurate than all of the number crunching in the world.
So true!!
Love love love this Mandy! I think you’ve nailed it and then some in your quality over quantity statement. What’s funny is that no matter what names pop up on a list for whatever reason, we all find that different people influence us and a lot of it has to do with their individual stories. Could I sit down and have a beer with this person? A lot of people that I’d want to chill with don’t have massive amounts of following, they have massive amounts of generosity.
Thanks for sharing. I saved this one!!
Nail on the head. Perceived influence (numbers) can be bought these days, so further investigation is always wise. Those with true influence always shine through