The Alien's Take on Social Influence

 

Recently I have seen a lot of blogs being written on Social Influence. This has me thinking about the meaning of Social Influence. What is it you are influencing? Just something being passed on?

Recently Tom Moradpour had a nice blog post about Social Influence. He wishes there were standards so we can all agree on what it is, then we can find it's actual value. I agree we need standards 100%. I also agree Klout has done the best to create a Brand. Even more impressive they respond on Twitter. I had the CEO and Founder respond to me on Friday over some tweets!

Tom's Post

Klout has improved  significantly now that the scores update on their own. In the past unless someone manually refreshed it was stale and old.

My specific issue with Influence Analysis is context and important information is not included.  Who is this person in real life? Are they someone who gets photographed and put in People Magazine thus causing products to be sold? Are you someone who moves sales needles just by people you call on the phone or places you hang out at? What if I am not on Twitter or Facebook and I have 3 close friends who tweet stuff I email them and it travels. What if I see something on Twitter and then call my friend who is the head buyer for Macy's and that call just got a huge order placed to a small fashion house? How can you determine where the influences came from in these scenarios? Is it just about pushing info that get's re-pushed?

What about the content? Great content get's moved on it's own. It has nothing to do with a person's influence it has to do with the content's influence. If I am a source of great content, and I don't share poor content what does that mean? It means you have to get me to see great content to have it passed on. 

And what about the goals of the influence? Is it page views so you can increase advertising revenues? Is it sales in retail stores? Is it people coming to your restaurant? Is it exposure for your art or writing? None of this gets captured in influence scores. How can you connect these things, especially with anything that happens offline. How can you know the kind of Influencer I am?

And what about the fact that most of our lives take place off line even if we are online so much. We have no solid way to measure off line Word of Mouth, Phone Call Influence, In Person Influence, the Influence from seeing Billboards/Print Ads/TV Ads/People on the Street, or even the influence of the Sales guy or the Special Deal at the store. And to really get Social Media Influence we have to tie this stuff in!

I know you think 'Well this is only online influence we care about.' Yes and No. All depends on your goal. I have mentioned before how much Ad Spend goes up in smoke at point of purchase. Social Influence does as well! Passing of Information is one thing, Action is another. Does it matter that my Chic Restaurant used Social to expose my place to 3 million people via Social for Free if no one shows up at my Restaurant? Or that 3 million get shown a teaser of my new book resulting in zero sales?

This is very complex stuff. My point is online Social Influence to me is a small piece to a bigger puzzle. It can mean way too many things. Every person or company hoping to push something via Social has completely different Goals and a Klout Score won't solve this. I still think Great Content, Great Product/Service, Great Customer Service, Great Price Point still trumps everything.

Context, Context, CONTEXT!

One thing I get aggro about when I read news, blog posts etc is lack of context. They take big numbers, great numbers, and use them to promote an agenda. But fail to put things in context so you can see if it is really news, important etc. It really is very poor reporting and more towards propaganda (calculated or innocent). Sadly many people buy it hook line and sinker.

Examples:

Story: Facebook breaks 250mil video views in 1 month (second most on web)

Context: 0.46 Videos per Person Per Month. Think of the tens of hours per week so many watch TVCable.

Context: Even YouTube's claim of 2bil videos viewed a day comes out to a few minutes per person who have the internet vs the hours per day spent watching TV Cable.

250mil video views is nice on Facebook in a month. How much can they monetize out of each view? Can I compared costs for Facebook, YouTube, or Cable/TV advertising to judge what will give me best results for my budget? Maybe Facebook winds up limited reach but high value per video view.

Story: New York Times now has more Twitter Followers than Print Subscribers.

Context: Apples to Oranges. They get $2/day in NYC more elsewhere plus Advertising for Print. To follow on Twitter is free, brings in little revenue and takes little effort on behalf of the follower.

Context: a better story would be how many click throughs from Twitter to an Article hosted on the Times Website are they getting each day/week/month. Yet no mention of this.

This could be a non-story if no one is clicking through to the NY Times Website hopefully generating some Digital revenue. Maybe it helps convert some followers to print subscribers or newsstand buyers. Maybe it will help convert digital only subscribers once the pay wall goes up?

Story: Twitter passes 150 million user account.

Context: with 100 Million Tweets per day most Twitter Accounts are not used each day.

What if only 20-30million people world wide were tweeting each day? But those people generate increased revenues and business activity from connections, faster awareness, loyalty, engagement where the value per Tweeter is worth more than a passive print add, cold phone call, or PR efforts will bring in per contact? 

This is business news to me and needs to be more accurate with proper context. Often the shiny coat being spun over shadows very impressive achievements. It's easy to be suckered into the Mashable/People Magazine type reporting. But ask more questions, and ask the right questions.