Social Influencers: The debate continues

There has been a lot of activity within the Social Media/Social CRM community about Fastcompany's project called The Influence Project. There has been extensive criticism about the modus operandi followed by Fastcompany in identifying the best influencer. Dr. Michael Wu from Lithium has been instrumental in his contribution to this discussion through his blog post The Fast Influencer Myth. Dr.Wu's analysis and contribution to the Social discussion has been exceptional. I would recommend a full read of the blog post and its comments .

Below is the comment that I posted on Dr. Michael Wu's blog post:

While we are essentially discussing influence, there is an overlap between what we are trying to call influence vs power and understandably so. Both these terms are very much related. One can exercise Power to influence another. And vice-versa, one can influence others and derive power as a result.

Mike’s examples of coercive influence (both examples: Gun Point, rebellious kid) are more towards one exerting his power to influence. Similarly Ned, your example of the influence that you are able to exert on your kids is primarily due to Positional Power.

It is really fascinating on how this topic started in the first place. Fastcompany’s experiment has had a very fruitful side-effect in terms of a healthy discussion on Influencers: what constitutes them, how they influence, and the anatomy of influence.

To bring some perspective back to this discussion, Mike started with specifically looking at how influence works when it comes to the Social Media.

Several traditional concepts of power (Bases of Power) that is used to influence such as positional, reward, coercive etc. are not very relevant to Social Networks and media. The two types of power in my opinion that are still relevant are Referent (such as Celebrities, communities) and Expert (such as MikeJ) powers.

Being an expert in a field could result in Celebrity status within that community or domain too over a course of time (actively blogging and contributing on a specific subject over a period of time) or through an event (such as authoring a book on a subject, presenting a widely acclaimed paper). In other words that is an influence due to the referent power derived by being an expert. Alternatively, referent power can be derived through a totally unrelated field such as Show-biz that will have the power to influence in related though different fields such as Fashion. Can this happen through social media channels? I think Yes.

Let’s take a re-look at the factors that Mike detailed in the The 6 Factors of Social Media Influence

Factors or attributes related to the Influencer:

1. Credibility
2. Bandwidth

Credibility: Mike, you define it as ‘The influencer's expertise in a specific domain of knowledge’

I would recommend modifying it to say ‘The influencer's expertise as perceived by the target in a specific domain at a given time’

‘Domain of Knowledge’ would in my opinion specifically apply to expert power. Perception plays a very important role when it comes to influence. A teen may buy an Iphone 4 having been influenced by let us say Hannah Montana sporting one. In case she finds that the calls are dropping off left and right, she may still give the benefit of doubt to Hannah. Even when Consumer Reports calls out the particular defect, the teen may still be forgiving of Hannah. Hannah’s influence in this case is due to the teen’s perception and highly emotional and less a factor of Hannah’s expertise. Expertise I would infer is required in varying degrees based on the domain or field.

How is this relevant to Organizations? Based on the domain that an organization operates in, they will have to choose their influencers in the social media. A Pharma company that manufactures drugs for say cancer would derive benefits through an influencer in a community who is on the drug. Hannah Montana or an expert scientist on cancer drugs will have far less influence.

Will send in more thoughts in a subsequent post.