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An Influencer Is an Influencer Is an Influencer?

January 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

roses“Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose,” is a Gertrude Stein quote we’ve all heard reminding us things are what they are no matter what you call them.

In the communications world, however, the term “influencer” doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing. One communications practitioner may define and apply the influencer concept in a way worlds apart from a second practitioner, though both are trying to harness influencers to change ideas, motivate new behaviors,  reach potential buyers, etc. one of three ways:

  • Communicating to influencers, to increase awareness of a brand or cause within the influencer community
  • Communicating through influencers, using influencers to increase awareness of a brand or cause amongst focal groups/target markets
  • Communicating with influencers, turning influencers into advocates of the brand or cause

Obviously, strategies to harness influencers would be very different depending on how you intend to tap them, not to mention who you think they are. Nevertheless, the term influencer seems to be thrown around indiscriminately these days as communications practitioners adjust to changes in technology, especially social media.

My personal take on the influencer equation is definitions/contexts generally lump into three broad categories:

  • Household names: celebrities, musicians, artists, and politicians who are assumed to drive thought and action of people they have no direct association with.
  • Thought leaders: networked, enthusiastic, and knowledgeable people who can ignite passion for your brand or cause in your community (otherwise known as tastemakers, social precincts, opinion leaders, uberinfluencers, 1 percenters [but not in the Occupy Wall Street context], 10 percenters, focusers, etc.) These people personally know the people they influence, although the ties that bind them may be weak.
  • Interpersonal influencers: people who focal groups/target markets regularly interact with and who influence their decisions (e.g., neighbors, friends, parents, teachers, coworkers, religious leaders, etc.). These people may live in relative obscurity within their communities. They, however, know well the people they influence and the ties that bind them are strong.

Bottom line? Influencers are not the same, even if communications practitioners refer to them with the same name.

What do you think of influencers? Are they the best route to a focal group/target market? Please share your ideas in the comments section.

Filed Under: Communications, Strategy Tagged With: , , , , ,

HOW TO: Unleash the ‘Crowd’ to Create Change

January 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Crowd close-upA Communications 301 rule of thumb is “information alone doesn’t change behavior.” You might have brilliant left-brained arguments about why people should do something, but if you don’t touch them emotionally, they won’t be swayed.

O.K., maybe they’ll give you a thumbs up, but they won’t act.

Raising awareness is only effective in changing behavior when you have the time and resources to reach the saturation point of “everybody knows that everybody knows that everybody knows.”

Almost always you do not.

To inspire action, you need to unite an idea with an emotion.  Then you need to make sure people have the necessary tools and community support to carry out your vision.

Success involves the following six principles:

  • Personal: People have to have a reason to care about your cause. You need to explain what the cost of failing to act will be on them as individuals and on society as a whole. Make sure to highlight real people and real stories.
  • Direct. You have to explain how people can help, tell them what you want them to do and when, and give them the tools they need to do what’s needed easily.
  • Transparent. If you share enough information about your cause—that’s personal and direct (see above) and transparent—a community can develop around it. Not only will this community give your supporters a sense of solidarity and connectedness, it can achieve something great that they couldn’t achieve through individual effort.
  • Hubbed. To grow your community and spur productive collaboration, you need to cultivate and connect social precincts, enthusiastic, networked, and knowledgeable people who can ignite passion for your cause. Only 3 to 5 percent of your community, these leaders are the hubs connecting and inspiring individuals and settings direction for the collaborative effort.
  • Independent. Independence means individuals can have the freedom to choose the task that suits their ability, time, or interest—no matter where they are or whoever else may be posting content at that time. No coordination or pre-existing relationship is required.
  • Close-Knit. Remember it’s all about connecting people to your cause, building relationships, and sharing and improving ideas. Whatever you do, don’t fall into the trap of focusing on technology and forgetting about humanity. The technology you use doesn’t matter as long as it allows your community to create a group identify, a culture of sharing and trust, and appropriate cultural norms.

What do you think about my post above? What do you think about unleashing crowds to create change? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

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Video Clip of the Month: Leading Online Communities

January 1, 2012 By 2 Comments

How can you turn a leaderless communications swarm into a collaborative online community that achieves results? That’s the zillion dollar question for 2012. As my runner up for January 2012 video clip of the month below shows (and anybody who has been following the news knows), self-directed communications swarms fueled many of the top news events of 2011.

While my runner up for video clip of the month above is inspiring, especially on the New Year, my main pick is enlightening. It features Roan Yong, a social collaboration expert from Singapore, on why online collaboration fails and how gamification can help.

Yong argues a leaderless communications swarm is a great starting point, but a leaderless swarm can’t think strategically to solve a problem. To turn collective action into productive collaboration, he says you need to tap and connect the tribal leaders: the 1 percent. To empower them to lead the communications swarm, he argues you need to gamify collaboration. In a blog post Yong wrote about his presentation, he explained:

“To gamify collaboration, we need to make collaborative task visible so that people can have the freedom to choose the task that suits their ability, time, or interest. We need to make collaborators’ strengths and weaknesses visible so that people can form collaboration team with complimentary skill set. And we need to give fair incentives based on contributions.”

Yong also shared his PowerPoint from his presentation online, which (along with his blog post) is also a great read if you don’t have a half hour to absorb the must know information in the video.

The Game of Collaboration

Fascinating stuff. Does Yong have “the answer” to leading online communities? Time will tell. Either way, 2012 definitely belongs to organizations and causes that can tap online communities to solve problems.

What do you think of using gamification to make online collaboration work? Do you think communications swarms need a leader to produce results? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

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Strategic or Scary? Public Diplomacy Commission Cut

December 26, 2011 By 4 Comments

Cross-cutting a treeAfter Tripoli fell to anti-Gaddafi forces last August, I remembered a particularly clairvoyant blog post/radio interview I ran across a couple of months earlier. The blog post/radio interview gave a spot on analysis of how information could be used to empower Libyans to take back their own country.

When I went back to the blog to find out if its author had any new predictions, I found out the Mountain Runner blog was on hiatus because its author had recently become executive director of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy (ACPD). I was relieved to learn somebody was at the helm who understood social media’s power to create communications swarms and was presumably on top of implications for foreign publics’ support of U.S. culture, values, policies, and interests.

To my shock and surprise, however, I ran across a tweet and blog post just before Christmas indicating the ACPD was being abolished after 63 years of service. Apparently, due to efforts to balance the federal budget, the ACPD was not reauthorized by Congress and ceased operations on Dec. 16, 2011. So what happened to its visionary executive director? Matt Armstrong was laid off just a little over a week before Christmas.

Ho ho ho!!!

If Congress’s actions really are guided by budget-cutting zeal versus a strategic reorganization of U.S. public diplomacy and strategic communications initiatives (as far as I can find out, the new Integrated Strategic Counterterrorism Communications Initiative has nothing to do with this), we’re in trouble as a country. Today, more than ever people unfriendly to U.S. culture, values, policies, and interests have the potential to take control of the political dialogue across geographic boundaries. All they need is passion, Internet or mobile connectivity, and social media savvy to spread their messages and potentially fuel mass collaboration in instigating change (or wreaking havoc as the case may be).

I, for one, would sleep a lot better knowing Congress had a team advising it on making sure U.S. Government activities that intend to understand, inform, and influence foreign publics break free of conventional wisdom, recognize discontinuity, and react to change.  Until we discover some sort of grand strategy behind Congress’s move, however, we’re left to find comfort in the fact the U.S. Department of State is abandoning its Cold War mindset only now.

Do you think cutting the ACPD was a good cost-cutting measure? Please feel free to challenge my analysis in the comments section.

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Did No Social Media Policy Lead to Racist Remarks?

December 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

West Indian Day Parade 2011A dozen or more New York City Police Department (NYPD) officers could get dooced for posting offensive comments on Facebook calling West Indian Day parade-goers in Brooklyn “savages,” “filth,” and “animals.” (Dooced, in case you don’t know, means fired from one’s job as a result of one’s actions on the Internet.)

The New York Times reported last week at least 20 comments maligning parade-goers on a “No More West Indian Day Detail” Facebook page were from NYPD officers. The page, dedicated to the unpleasantness of working during the annual event, disappeared from public view just days after a defence lawyer for a man arrested during the parade found it, but not before the attorney saved all the data.

Almost as disturbing as the hateful speech officers allegedly used is the fact the NYPD may not have an official social media policy. New York Radio Station WNYC 93.9 FM reported Paul Browne, spokesman for the NYPD, could not confirm one existed.

Huh!

You could understand that if we were talking about some rural community but the NYPD? Come on!

While it may be obvious to some that you shouldn’t post anything anywhere online you wouldn’t want your grandmother, boss, or religious leader to read, it isn’t obvious to everyone. Besides spelling out proper employee conduct, a social media policy is a must for empowering your employees to excel in social media on behalf of your institution.

Kim Stephens, writer of the idisaster 2.0 blog, wrote an extremely informative post I could not begin to improve upon on the 36 Items to include in Government Social Media policies. My advice to the NYPD (and any other government entity) is to check out her post and develop one!

 

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