It’s Not About Influence – It’s About Trust

If you are involved in creating digital strategy or working with social media from a professional point of view, you are bound to hear the word “influence” bandied about. Maybe you have been asked to work up an influencer outreach program for a new product. Perhaps you are thinking about commissioning an influencer engagement strategy to help you tap into the pot of gold that the social graph represents. Whatever your reasons, consider this first

What if "Influencers" don’t even exist?

Instead, what if we have confused celebrities in this WoM induced hysteria around Influencers?

In F*ck Influencers (or Influencing Conversations), Sean Howard teases out some interesting questions in relation to influencers and their perceived role in spreading a message or story. It starts with a focus around blogs and outreach, but quickly moves beyond that. Take a few minutes to read his post if you have not seen it yet. He rounds it out with a number of questions:

Why do people share links or retweet on platforms like Twitter?
What types of things do people share and for what benefit?
How does how people see their networks affect their decisions on what to share?

To me, some of the questions pointed towards the Auchterlonie Effect, but on second thought, I realised that what needs to be understood is not the effect (or transmission) of story but the underlying behaviour which triggers its contagion across a network.

It is not necessarily about connecting to the most people, but connecting to the most people who can derive benefit by interacting with you. You see, it is not about YOU creating value for people (by creating content, linking etc), but people FINDING value in what you do create …

Every time we forward on a link, retweet a message read on Twitter or any other type of social network interaction, we are CHOOSING to act. We are not just using our network of connections to FILTER the noise, we are using it to SHAPE our experience. It is a choice. And understanding this distinction places us in a context where STORYTELLING emerges as vitally important?

Fundamentally, my view is that ideas don’t spread through networks but through people. And, anyway, it seems we are just substituting the word “publisher” with the word “influencer” – without clearly understanding the fundamental changes that have already taken place in the socially networked world. The challenge for marketers is to find those who are open to sharing the message, the idea or story that they receive from someone that they are connected to. This is where the Auchterlonie Effect does have a role.

Of course, this would all make more sense if there was hard data available!

Mark Earls comes to the rescue by highlighting this lecture by Stanford’s Eric Sun, whose new research on influence is investigated with particular reference to Facebook. Far from confirming the idea of the importance of single point influencers in the instigation of “viral” or contagious content (as per Gladwell’s Tipping Point), the data indicates instead that these effects occur much more closely in line with the theories of Duncan Watts.

The research was structured around “dispersion chains” – the length of connections through which a message, story etc would travel across a cluster of connections. Sun’s research started with a number of expectations regarding the length of dispersion. It was expected that the following would produce longer dispersion chains:

  • Those with more experience using Facebook
  • Those with more activity on Facebook
  • Those with more Friends on Facebook

Interestingly when we think of “influencers” within a social networking context, we do think in terms of sheer numbers. We think of activity and engagement. And we think of those with “rankings” which generally indicate longevity, not necessarily velocity. Sun’s research indicated that “the user’s number of friends is not really meaningful”.

When Sun’s data was clustered by activity it was shown that almost 75% of Fans of a particular Fan page sit within an initial grouping – that they are already connected. Importantly, the instigators account for about 15% of this cluster. That is, contagion starts not with one, but with multiple points of connection – indicating again that “influence” is more closely related to action – with “doing” or “participation” than “telling” and dispersion. It’s more about  behaviour – and for behaviour to become contagious, it has to operate within a trusted environment.

This is what really fascinates me. If influence does not influence, then the focus for marketers must necessarily shift. We need to be thinking networks of trust – and this is not something we can “break into” or “interrupt”. We need to be invited in. And that is a whole new ball game – that we may not yet be ready for.

For more thinking on this, take a look at Andreas Weigend’s open wiki on data mining and ecommerce – especially the section on Facebook and trust.

10 thoughts on “It’s Not About Influence – It’s About Trust

  1. Agree completely and have seen the exact same trend working on influencer campaigns at Soup. Sheer numbers of followers, friends, readers, etc is never the be all and end all of influence. It still serves a purpose in terms of reach, and if that’s all you’re interested in, by all means only focus on the numbers.
    But to have a really effective influencer campaign you’ve got focus qualitatively on what your influencers are passionate about and how they go about interacting with their friends and networks, etc, etc.
    Time consuming, but worth it.
    Anyway, great post – given me a nice list of further reading as well.

  2. Great post Gavin. Like Scott I’ve been thinking about the difference between influence in terms of reach, and influence in terms of quality impact, of late. There’s a huge difference.
    I missed your Auchterlonie Effect post, it’s fascinating stuff.

  3. Nice thinking, Gavin. There’s something that “earned media” can inherit from “paid media”: the concepts of reach and affinity. If you think about influence in a more “traditional” concept, you can have basically two types of it – and a lot of nuances between them:
    . Influence with high affinity and low reach: tends to push messages strongly to many generations of “influenced” because the bonds are strong
    . Influence with low affinity and high reach: it’s about spreading a message to anyone connected with the “influencer’s” digital channels. It’s obviously a lighter influence and could leave no impact.
    I’ve worked on a visual to try explaining this.
    http://blog.digitalingredients.co.uk/2009/05/influencers-how-to-find-the-best-ones.html
    Thanks again for this post, it could be the base of a framework for thinking about influence.

  4. Nice post, Gavin.
    ‘Ideas do not spread through networks but through people’ – you have summarised this post best with that line. My only area of dissonance if I might say so is trust. Trust is a function of experience. For example, I trust GE products because they have been consistent…
    The point you are trying to make should be applicable to a ‘newbie’. That is possible when people see value irrespective of lack of experience with it. That is created by people with networks sometimes acting as an enabler.

  5. Agree, Scott. This is very time consuming, but it is also where most benefit can come. It’s the only way that I can see that you can build value into a community based relationship.

  6. Great stuff. I love your point about confusing “influencer” and “broadcaster”.
    My thinking is now solving your influence vs. trust conundrum slightly differently: if the mechanism of spread is this strong human tendency to copy what others are doing/thinking/feeling then our job as marketers is to help folk do this more in order to encourage the spread mechanism to work.
    More visibility, more “eyeline” management?
    What do you think?

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