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.

Facebook the Big Phat Social Video Failure

First off I wish to state something because I don't want to sound like a complete jerk. When I normally rail on Facebook, it's specifically for their selectively hyping things that make the site seem more impressive to Brands, Marketers, Agencies, Investors, Media, and Humanity than they actually are all in the name of trying to go IPO and not lose their Mafia Money Investor's shirts.

What Facebook has done is pretty impressive. Having 60 million US consumers log into a site each day is something to be complimented. Even using Nielsen's more believable numbers of 146 million unique visitors for the month of August would have over 40 million US consumers logging in. Very few web properties can say this.

What has me in a huff today is several news stories hyping the fact that Facebook has passed Yahoo into second place for online video views with 250 million in August. 

LINK

I hate aggregation when it makes things sound incredible. Too many of you (especially the Mashable's...ahem..I mean media) sound like that Big Dumb Dog who follows the Little Smart Dog in the cartoon repeating everything the Little Smart Dog says without thinking what you are saying.

But I live in reality!

I know you think wow 250 million views, but we forget this is a worldwide network with supposedly 540 million members. This network claims 55min per day per user spent on Facebook. This network has pretty much conned everyone into this Viral bullshit that really is false. Facebook might help make a You Tube Video go viral, but Twitter, email, and word of mouth in person and on the phone are also part of this.

Using Facebook's own numbers here is the proper perspective:

Every active user watches 0.46 Videos per month. Not even half a video?

Facebook claims 491 million hours per day spent on the network or 14.72 Billion hours of time per month. 

And we all know how many people post videos into the live feed. And all they could get is 250 million views for a whole month?

If I was a Brand or a Marketer I would be saying WTF? How come such a big massive failure when it comes to video? And even using the lame excuse 'Well it's ramping up!' Did you just read what I wrote. 27.5 Hours of time per user per month and each user watched 0.46 Videos? That probably averages about 3 mins out of 27.5 hours spent, are watching video per user. 

I hate to say it Facebook, but your numbers look better using Nielsen's 146 Million unique visitors and 6hrs per month spent per user, than the bullshit your shoveling down peoples throats.

The Myth of Viral and Klout

Everyone wants Viral. The Social Media Industry in it's own best interest have created the Myth of Viral for Brands and Businesses. They talk about Influencers like they can help your Brand. But is this really the way to market and sell and engage via Social Networks?

First off I wish to give Kudos to Adverve: LINK They hosted an expert Josh Warner, who's company helps Brands with viral video views. Josh in his honesty claimed only 5 or 6 Viral successes out of over 120 Campaigns.All the campaigns met the view goals but only a handful went truly Viral.

Using Twitter as a better case study I was building a following for a client. Using HootSuite I could see very easily these metrics: Number of Followers. No. they are following. Klout Score (silly measurement no one should take seriously) and Tweets per day.

At first you are like a kid in a candy store. The feeling is the bigger the number of followers the more potential to spread my clients message. This turned out to be a false assumption. The two biggest metrics we should be looking at is how active they are on Twitter (No. of Tweets per day) and secondly the lower the number of people they follow the higher the chance they will see a Tweet from my client.

I came to this conclusion because we had a low number of Trivia Game players and that the players who had the smallest networks usually played and won. Why is this?

I use an average measure of 4 tweets per person on Twitter. This balances out the people who tweet once per day and those who Tweet a lot. The more accounts you follow the more Tweets that come into your feed, reducing the chance of you seeing a specific tweet that is not directed at that person.

Extreme example: @ChrisBrogan He has an 86 Klout and 150,000 followers. He also follows 140,000 accounts. So his stream should have about 560,000 tweets per day coming to him. GOOD LUCK 

GETTING YOUR TWEET SEEN! Never mind retweeted.

But someone who has a small network and is a heavy Tweeter means 1] They will see your tweet 2] They are using the service all day. Remember once a Tweet is missed it goes into the Twitter Afterlife Void of Nothingness.

The same holds for Facebook. Both Live Feeds are so filled with Clutter that it is impossible to get your message seen on a consistent basis. This doesn't make me negative on Social Media. In fact its a revolution in interpersonal communication. But to get heard as a Brand or for Engagement it is a pure crap shoot. Most Brand Fan Pages on Facebook have less than 0.1% Engagement levels.

Be Realistic - Have goals that are real. Don't be arrogant.

Bring Value - give your network a reason to WANT to engage with you.