I have a question for you. “Why does one person’s recommendation carry a lot of weight, when another person can give the same recommendation, yet few people take any notice?”
The answer, of course, is influence.
The recommendation of an influential person is powerful and in business it has a huge commercial value too. It’s why a sports star will get paid millions; just to be seen wearing and endorsing a brand like Nike or Adidas. Their influence is so strong that it changes the way people actually feel about the brands they endorse. As a result, the brand makes more sales.
Twitter & FriendFeed make measuring online influence easier
One of the great things about sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, is that they give you an insight into how influential some people are – online at least! On FriendFeed, I have seen people like Robert Scoble and Louis Gray generate hundreds and hundreds of comments; just by asking a quick question – such is their influence.
On Twitter, I have seen similar results. On Sunday, for example, Chris Brogan sent out the message below.
When I checked my blog stats for Sunday, I saw a significant spike in visitors here from Twitter. The interesting thing was the unusually high percentage of Chris’ ‘followers’, who clicked that link. It was around 400% higher than I usually see, when someone ReTweets my posts. In other words, Chris’ followers were 4 times more likely to click a link he sent, than I usually see. His Twitter followers clearly trust him to provide interesting links. Now, I am the first to admit that this was a snapshot, but I see similar patterns repeated all the time.
Influential recommendations
I have a friend, who has recommended my marketing services to seven of her contacts. All seven contacts called me and within just one call, all seven became clients. Each one told me how much they respected Sarah’s recommendation and endorsement of my services. In other words, before I even spoke to these people, Sarah’s recommendation had already reassured them that I would get the sales results they needed.
Influence, is a huge subject – way too big to cover in a single blog post. However, there’s a great tip I found years ago, which we can all use, in order to help us understand how to increase our commercial influence.
The tip is simply to study two types of people: Those who are highly influential and also those who lack influence.
You will quickly see that there are certain things, which people within each group have in common. For example, I find that people with commercial influence are usually far more knowledgeable in their field than their counterparts. They are also excellent at developing trust.
Okay – Now it’s your turn! Please share your thoughts regarding influence.
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Hi Jim,
I felt this on my own skin. I tried to speak about it but my influence is not that high
. This thing happen when I launched my new blog. I asked some of my friends to tweet something about it. And I remember that one of them had 50k followers or so. He sends out a tweet and … nothing extraordinary happens. In that moment I realized that by an odd series of events I learned that the power of Twitter stays in how much authority you have. I don’t think you can build relations with everyone of your followers. Instead build trust around you. I also try to interact as much as possible with authority users on Twitter. I realize that one tweet from them it can make the difference and possibly some new clients.
Toma,
Thanks for the comment. You are right regarding Twitter; I too have seen people with tens of thousands of followers retweet links to my posts, with just 2 or 3 people clicking their links.
Equally, I know people with smaller followings, who clearly influence a LOT more of their followers.
Thanks again Toma.
Here’s a different take on this. What about the influence TWITTER itself has?
Sites used to complain about stumbleupon traffic and say it wa crap compared to twitter. Now, twitter traffic is just as bad as SU.
Twitters gotten bigger, but it’s lost influence.
So now we have, not just the most influential bloggers, but the most influential Twitter users – the TOP TWITS. Amusing.
Great article… with 60k followers I find the number of clicks from links depends on the type of sequence of tweets that I do… if I only do one tweet about a particular matter, in isolation, the click rate is VERY small… if however, I am developing a theme, as much as 500 people can click through in a matter of minutes.
as an aside, some of the url shortners that are available to track clicks, have significanntly different reporting result. bit.ly seems to inflate the figure [??]
Rather than the influence of the tweeter… it is confluence of followers and consistent subject matter
I’d really like to see how much influence Twitter has IRL. Sure, I’ve met people, thrown parties and the like, but is what any of us are saying influencing our real life actions?
Love this article. Influence across social media (especially twitter) is something very close to my heart. My company, Klout, measures influence to understand the impact of the types of referrals you write about.
Your comment to Toma was dead on about follower count not being a clear indication of authority/influence. We track several million people, with close to 50 million bit.ly urls with stats, that we have analyzed and it’s all about engagement when it comes to the power to drive traffic. We have lots of examples of somebody with as little as 100 followers getting as many clicks on average link-for-link as people with nearly 10,0000 followers.
@Tyler – Have you ever gone to a restaurant/bar or seen a movie that someone on twitter has recommended? Personally I find stuff from twitter influencing my real life all the time.
Anyone can amass 50,000 followers on Twitter, but they will not necessarily be responsive. If you follow 50,000 or so, many of them will follow you back either by automation or thinking it’s Twitter etiquette. Those who have large numbers of followers, gained organically, will have a much better response to their tweets than those who used other methods.
Some great points here – thank you.
Carol,
Love the idea of Top Twits. I think it’s ‘people’ that are either influential or not – rather than bloggers or Twitter users.
Tyler,
I think people will trust what some people say via Twitter. In those instances, they will make decisions based on something the heard on Twitter. That said, Twitter itself is just a tool. It’s the people using it that define it.
Wayne,
Interesting. Robert Scoble had around 30k followers last year, when he sent a tweet to his followers about something I had written. He generated almost 1000 page views in the next 2 hours.
Joe,
It’s good to hear that your research has echoed my experiences. I will have to check out http://www.klout.net/
Terry,
You are right – In fact, your comment here deserves to be a blog post in its own right.
Good post Jim that provokes me to think about what differentiates those with influence from those without.
For example, many people greatly respect you although you don’t tweet profusely, or get 100’s of comments per post. I’ve found that for people to *trust* you – not just read or be influenced by you – you have to be more like a sniper with your tweets – carefully accumulating your expertise over many tweets. That is certainly what I’ve seen you do.
I wonder then, if I tweet too much. Good thoughts Jim. Most people would point out ‘here’s an influencer”, but not make you think
Hello Scott,
Thanks for the comment sir – Though you’re incorrect regarding comments here.
Many posts on this blog have over 100 comments, this one post alone has over 600 comments: http://jimsmarketingblog.com/2008/12/11/building-your-twitter-network/
When I used Twitter VERY regularly and had England’s 3rd most followed Twitter account, I got a lot more comments here. (I reset my Twitter account to zero following / zero followers when it became too time consuming – low leverage.)
Twitter makes it very, very easy to get lots of comments on a blog. If you want them.
Today, as you pointed out, I don’t tweet very much.
Hey Jim.
You’re one of the few people I connected with on line that I immediately believed in and trusted. Thats influence right there. I’ve now been reading your nmewsletter for a couple of years and always used to tune in when you did stuff on the BBC. I also bought and regularly listen to your CDs.
Love ya big guy!
Hello Kyra,
Thanks for your kind words. It’s great to know you still listen to The Motivation Master Class and get something from it.
Thanks again.
Jim
What I meant wasn’t 100s total, but 100s per post. I’m well aware you have loads of discussion across all your posts.
Do you think being England’s ex-3rd most followed plays a part in your current following?
LOL
I’m tired – I omitted to say “on average” – I was comparing to Techcrunch / Mashable where there are stupidly large amounts of comments – most spam, etc
Good show Jim! I appreciate the numerical support you give from Chris Brogan’s reference to your blog. His followers were 4 times more likely to click the link than when other folks do so. That sort of trust and following is hard to achieve without trust. Good lessons.
Hello Mark,
Thanks for the comment. Good to hear from you!
First time here, I found lots of useful things to learn from. Just wanted to say thanx
Interesting post. I love things that make one think. Why I find this interesting is in the definition we all tend to lean toward for influence. To be fair, it’s clear the Scoble’s of the world appear to have more influence than you or I. But, and this is important I think, we each have a measure of influence regardless of our ability to reach the masses. We have all made another think, changed a mind, influenced another to alter their own path. What differentiates Scoble from me, for instance is the actual numbers. But, and again this is important, the value is in what matters most to those using the term. I find value in what I do and sometimes find value in knowing I have impacted one, rather than impacting large numbers. It really is true the old saying: To make a difference in just one life, a difference that does good, rather than harm, far surpasses having arbitrarily changed the course for millions. I can live with that. What can you live with?
Hello SHeryl,
Thanks for the comment. I especially liked the quote you ended your comment with! Powerful words indeed!
Good point, that is called Referent power: influence based on a high level of identification with, admiration of, or respect for the powerholder.
You are spot on Jim!
We are running Future of Influence Summit in SF on August 31 to delve into this topic in detail. As you’ve mentioned this includes issues of how influence is becoming the center of marketing, and how influence is driving content and publishing. Full details on the event, research etc at:
http://www.futureofinfluencesummit.com/
I absolutely believe that “influence is the future of media” – this is the most relevant frame around what is happening online and offline today.
I’ll retweet Louis Gray’s tweet of your post (which is how I found it), driving some more traffic to your great insights Jim.