Forget Influentials: in Viral Marketing, Context Matters

That's right, reaching influentials is not the way to reach the many. Duncan Watts says the emergence of a trend does not depend on influentials. Instead, it depends on the susceptibility of the public to the "virus." Social-network effects are so complex, that trends are basically random. Has The Tipping Point peaked? Clive Thompson says so in the February issue of Fast Company magazine.

I participated in Duncan Watts Small World Columbia research project, and although I'm sure he and I have six degrees of separation, we have not met in person. Yet, I have definitely an affinity with his findings. I have felt many times, even from my own observations of social media patterns and from the years of networking, that it is mostly a matter of luck that decides whose story gets noticed. Remember the old adage: right place and right time?

Steve Rubel Tweeted a link to a new Edelman white paper that can help take a closer look at influence. It's titled -- Distributed Influence: Quantifying the Impact of Social Media. Some of the highlights of the paper are:

• It's becoming increasingly important to figure out who are the people who set the tone for online advice -- those who act as conversation catalysts (could I push it and use the word agent?).

• To that effect, a panel composed by Max Kalehoff of Nielsen Buzzmetrics, the Adverting Research Foundation, and Sarah Petersen of StrategyOne on the measurement side got together with the Edelman team under the watchful eye of industry observers Peter Kim and Charlene Li of Forrester and Dr. Walter Carl of Northeastern University to discuss who are the most trusted people, the ones with the loudest voice. Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine and Keith O'Brien of PRWeek joined Rubel as publishers. Good starting group.

• How do you calculate an individual's online influence? The Social Media Index was the catalyst for the discussion. Take a look at the report for scores and measurement. At this point I observed that the index, if so adopted, would seem to indicate that unless you participate in an arbitrary list of networks, including Facebook (which I endeavor to avoid), Flickr (another I haven't found reason to use), and Digg, your total score will be lower. Will it be? I think there are more balanced ways of measuring online influence. More on this in another post.
  

• A definition of influence that also recognizes the role of emotion and external pressure (the crowd factor). We discussed a definition here not long ago. I found the quote from Dr. Carl's article useful to gain some bearings:

“the fact that people also seek to confirm their rightness of how they order/make sense of their world brings communication into contact with community (we define community as our network of personal and social relationships). In this context, to interact within a community of relationships is to engage in interpersonal influence. We are continually seeking to confirm the validity of how we order the environment and, one powerful to confirm our own view of the world is to put our view in communication with others' views, and to have an effect on both others' views and our own.

With social media, people's discourse leaves a digital trail, making it available as a way to infer how people order their environment. In confirming our own views through a process of
communication we often make subtle adaptations to our views. Thus, conversations are everyday negotiations of this sense-making process and to the extent people shift the
discourse, or engage in efforts to reaffirm a certain discourse, we can say influence has occurred. Maintaining or ending a conversations is also a way to engage in influence.”

I will give you an extra couple of minutes to digest the thought of indelible digital trails on your opinions and behaviors.

• There is value in the network and influence can be determined by the meme, which Jeremiah Owyang defined as: an idea or discussion that grows and spreads form individual to individual into a lengthy commentary.

• Definitions of the arc of influence from the perspectives of the influencer and that of the influenced. I disagree with Steve's assertion that influence needs critical mass for action. Instead, it may want critical connection. We are talking about marketing conversation.

• The move to micro communications and a nice formula that has the volume and quality of attention times time over size and quality of audience to represent an individual's online presence.

Admittedly, it's a good start. I am interested in micro communications. The future of social networking may not be one big social graph but instead myriad small communities on the internet to replicate the millions that exist off line.

Much of the paper is focused on people and their individual and network circumstances, with what I consider Dr. Carl's thinking a key contribution. I think the reason why it is so hard to predict patterns is that the context in which we live and operate is by and large very difficult to control. Individual choices are shaped by context as well as the recommendations of others. Which means you can help spread word of mouth so far. Social contagion makes the spreading easier, it does not make it more predictable.

Back to Watts. According to him, you mix a dose of old-school marketing with a dash of six-degree effects. Watts and his cohort, Jonah Peretti, have married mass ad buys with technology like ForwardTrack, which displays the route the ad travels once you've forwarded it using the "share with your friend" button. Just like the tracking software of social networks.

This allows them to see where the ad goes and how it moves thanks to those who keep it moving. These people, Watts says, may not necessarily be the most "important" in a network. The rationale is that since you do not know who's going to pass the ad on, you should aim as broad as possible. He's calling part of his research at Yahoo, where he works now, Big Seed marketing.

Let's say you are trying to build some buzz around your product or service. What I conclude from what both the white paper suggests and the article says:

1. Focus less on who people influence and more on how people are influenced.
2. Think more about networks, and network structure, rather than treating everyone as behaving independently (group dynamics).
3. Move away from the idea that buzz can be engineered to achieve some pre-established outcome, and get better at measuring and reacting to buzz that arises naturally (observation from context).

This is a lot to digest in such a short space. I've seen talk around these very concepts on Twitter recently. How would you approach measurement? Do you agree on the findings on influence?

[Image: is the value of a social network defined also by who is excluded?]

Comments

[Skip Shuda]

Valeria - an enlightening tour of the latest thinking around influence and social media. Its an area that is of great interest to me. We had a blog entry called "20 Best Entrepreneurial Quotes" that just exploded in December (front page of Digg and Del-icio.us for a day or two) ... and we were really perplexed why that one hit while others didn't. Your post points out the importance of dropping attachment to specific results, but rather resonating on the "how" and context of the current "conversations".

Its also a powerful shift from the old school of "its not what you know, but who you know" (thank God!) and moving to "its more about what you know, how you say it - and what the current listening context is." Its all about resonating and being relevant.

[Jonny Bentwood]

Valeria, thanks for the link to the white paper. You have written a great post highlighting some of the main points and even made a few new conclusions. This was always my aim as the paper's goal was to encourage conversation about this topic and not be an end in itself.
I especially liked what your third point, namely:
Move away from the idea that buzz can be engineered to achieve some pre-established outcome, and get better at measuring and reacting to buzz that arises naturally (observation from context).
I look forward to reading more of what you have to say.

Jonny

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Skip -- I'm so glad you joined this discussion. For those who do not know, Skip is a brilliant entrepreneur in love with technology (we had a conversation a few months back on some of his work -- see side panel). "What the current listening context is" as you put it, or attention, is critical. The traditional marketing -- be in as many places as possible -- has become be listening in as many places as possible, with social media being one of them.

@Jonny -- I am seeing more and more how sociology/anthropology and economics can meet. Not go on tangents, but the current studies on neural marketing complement the more traditional reliance on psychology. I could go on. Maybe there will be a future conversation on how observation from those angles and teachings lead us back to a more natural way of doing business ;-)

[Marshall Sponder]

Well, I will comment on your post - I do think influentials matter (I don't think your saying that they don't matter - but that they are not the primary means of communicating a message) and wrote a post on it http://www.webmetricsguru.com/2008/01/social_media_influentials.html

[Valeria Maltoni]

As I wrote in the comment of your post, we are talking about viral marketing here. Plus, people defined as influentials may be a big hindrance to the spreading of a message in some cases:

- maybe it does not match their ideas and agenda;
- they don't have time to read your message and figure out what to do about it;
- they might be inclined to spread something that they perceive as a trend (so already being touted by others) to show they are with it;
- right place and right time is valid with them as well.

These are just some thought I had from where I sit -- and I am not as busy as Scoble or others you list as influentials.

[Herb]

Valeria,

Lots of interesting bits to digest. You might want to check out this post on Strong vs. Weak ties in social networks.

http://bokardo.com/archives/weak-ties-and-diversity-in-social-networks/

I discussed a bit of the idea here -

http://herbsawyer.com/2007/10/22/mess-of-thoughts-on-effective-mass-brand-communication-using-social-media-kind-of/

[Valeria Maltoni]

I am completely on board with diversity and distance -- as in not knowing someone too well. Why do we take the advice of a third party and not that same coming from within the organization? Taking people we know and work with for granted is quite common.

Back to influentials, the way this thought transfers there is that they are a known entity -- and we may become biased as to what they think, one way or the other... more food for thought here. Thank you!

[Bud Caddell]

I'm gonna ask the stupid question --

Your post is called "Forget Influentials" -- but everything talks about measuring and identifying influencers. Is the thrust of the post to pay more attention to the community context, not just the agents? But doesn't anything "viral" still depend on that select group of people hard-wired to spread things?

[Valeria Maltoni]

Bud,

Not a stupid question at all. Thank you for taking the time to weigh in and welcome to the conversation. The point of Watts' research is actually to demonstrate two things: that (1) anyone is a network can become a temporary influential if they choose to spread the information; (2) people's level of readiness to see/hear a message influences the spreading of it.

The definition of influential in the Edelman report actually supports that. If you look at the Social Media Index, for example, people who participate in a number of networks are favored. Sure, you will see the most known people measured there, but I would bet that there are many more who have a high index and good mix and are known in other circles.

With spreading I would factor in passion and right time, right place. Some examples of that is that relatively unknown bloggers have broken big news in this last year.

[Gaurav Mishra]

Unless I’m way off the mark here, and correct me if I am, the only debate here is whether you should spend your marketing dollars targeting your ads at a lower number of influentials or reaching a broader market. This is a debate about cost trade-offs, not the fundamental nature of social networks.

Given that the objective of most marketers is to spread a given idea in the most cost-efficient manner (and it is), given that improvements in technology will make it more cost-efficient to identify and target influentials (and it will), and given that influentials themselves will become more connected via social media tools (and they will), word-of-mouth/ social/ viral marketing practitioners will do well to continue to focus on the tipping point potential of influentials.

[Valeria Maltoni]

At least you are consistent, Gaurav
http://servantofchaos.typepad.com/soc/2008/01/the-democracy-o.html

I am with David Reich on the Servant of Chaos comment. Publicity, which is generally less costly than advertising, can reach a relatively small group of people, to a degree.

Some combination of mass and "influentials" could work, but who knows what the magic formula is? It will probably differ in every case.