The myth persists of reaching social media "influentials," despite more and more research showing we share information in small, personal networks of 5-10 people. I discuss the topline arguments, then review the 3 level of listening and engaging currently available: pretenders like Klout, listening platforms like Radian6, and large-scale "big data" analysis like the Dachis Social Business Index. In the end, we're focusing on how to reach consumers on social networks rather than why. Let's build great, resonant brand experiences and social media will scale itself.

1. THE MYTH OF DIGITAL INFLUENCE
ROHN JAY MILLER

2. THIRSTY?
The Most Interesting
Man in the World must
be very influential, yes?

3. The Big Influencer Theory
Bernardo Huberman, Director of HP’s Social Computing Lab:
“Businesses have a finite amount of money and time; therefore,
they must identify the most connected people they can to help
expand their reach.
In social networks, brands can connect with everyday people who
are the celebrities of their networks. The value to businesses is that
they can have access to the respective Rolodexs of consumers and
reward them as a result.”
(source: The Rise of Digital Influence, by Brian Solis with Alan Weber, Altimeter Group, March 2012)

4. YOU ARE
THIRSTY
As old media fragments
“reach and frequency”
have been replaced by
the hunt within social
networks for “scale” by
reaching “influentials.”

5. Research is beginning to find that “big influentials”
theory doesn’t work. We share in many small
networks of 5-10 people—not massive waves
influenced by “influentials.” Oops.
Source: AdAge 3/7/12 Digital Next, Steinberg and Krawczyk

6. Big shot
“influentials
” reach
many
people, but
with little
influence.
And look at
the list
below who
really has
influence—
re-tweet
contests,
Twitsdraw,
yada, yada
Source: “Influence and Passivity in Social Media,” by Romero, Galuba, Asur, Huberman 8/2010 HP Social Computing Lab

7. HOW DO WE
MEASURE
INFLUENCE?

8. Klout is for Clowns. It says people who tweet and are re-tweeted are
“influentials.” But there’s no science to back this up.

9. I’ve got strong opinions on Klout because of the publicity (and
credibility) they’re getting. The mission of Klout is to have a $500
million IPO using a simplistic proxy for “influence.” Influence about
what? With whom? Where’s the attribution model? BTW, when I post
at Social Media Today in the first hour I’ll get 400 “reads” and 325 re-
tweets. What’s happening? People are RT’ing without reading just to
pump the value of their Twitter feed—and get a better Klout score.
OMG.

10. Klout’s “influence
matrix” describes
the 16 types of
influencers in its
model. But there’s
*no* reward for
creating, only for
passing along other
people’s stuff and
getting others to RT
that.

11. RADIAN 6
Real social “listening” platforms like Radian6 are
working with keyword analysis, and beginning to
add early forms of sentiment analysis. Still early
in the game.

12. Source: Forrester Research, The Forrester Wave™: Listening Platforms, Q3 2010

13. A big step up is the Dachis Group’s Social Business Index,
which is using NLP to evaluate a massive “big data” scale of
social messages for 30,000 companies, including 40% of the
Fortune 500
DACHIS

14. Here you can see the
social behaviors that
distinguishes
between public, the
company, employees
and so on.
DACHIS

15. We live in a society obsessed with measurement,
but the act of measuring often means that the
thing being measured becomes illusive..But
what's happening here isn't just measurement:
it's trying to leverage measurement to do
something.
That's where it loses its role as a measurement
process.
--danah boyd, Microsoft Research
(source: The Rise of Digital Influence, by Brian Solis with Alan Weber, Altimeter Group, March 2012)

16. measure what we can measure, not
ssarily what is valuable to measure.
it’s hard. Really hard. Sometimes
an really measure social memes,
an’t attribute them. Other times
an see people are popular, not to
t effect.
DIRECTION
HEISENBERG’S
UNCERTAINTY
PRINCIPLE POSITION

17. Look at all the variables!
TIME CONTEXT MOOD RELATIONSHIP

18. IT’S ALL HIS FAULT

19. “The Tipping Point” has become the dominant marketing ideology.
When social media rose, we naturally transferred Gladwell’s model into
social media, without knowing if it was really true. OMG.
Source: “Visualizing The Tipping Point,” David Armano, Logic + Emotion blog, 2006

20. This should
be
“GREATNESS”
Brian Solis has done some serious thinking
found in his recent “The Rise of Digital
Influence.” Here’s his model. The center
post is labeled “resonance,” which I think
really is another way of saying “greatness.”
(source: The Rise of Digital Influence, by Brian Solis with Alan Weber, Altimeter Group, March 2012)

21. Here’s a short list of qualities that make a
person—or a tweet—influential.
TREND EMPATHY
SOCIAL
SIGNIFICANCE
HUMOUR
PERSONAL
SIGNIFICANCE
ZEITGEIST ARTISTIC
AFFIRMATION QUALITY
NOVELTY
SEXY

22. What’s great, resonant messaging? It has the qualities I just listed.
Usually 3-4 of them at the same time. Here’s an example. I think we
have this “influence” problem backwards. We focus on the architecture
of the problem, measuring it, Influentials Theory, trying to make it a
system that will scale. We need to focus on resonant (great) messages
that engage people. I give you Jerry the Dog, and his 7.5 Million views
on You Tube: (Click to see his video.)

23. Think & discuss
• Measure digital social
influence
• Affect digital social
influence
• Coordinate between
digital & offline
• Create resonant brand
communications

24. rohnjaymiller.com