What would happen if I told you I could get you hired some place where you'd love to work? Or if you learned that I could hook you up with the right business partner and you'd end up making tons of money?
How about a talk with a few connections and you'd sell books by the truckload? What if I could help you sell your company?
I have done all of those things and more, successfully. You wouldn't know from the number of comments to my posts, or retweets, would you?
A funny thing this about influence. Everyone's after it, either to have it or to leverage it. And very few take the time to understand how it works.
Not just mining the data. Because influence is a renewable resource. You can uncover and help amplify it by connecting people with shared interests.
Are appearances making us lazy? Or maybe automation is. About 3 years ago, I wrote a post about how in Web 3.0 artificial intelligence agents will be conversation agents. Ahead of the times, it seems.
The truth is -- everyone is wrong about influence. Except your customers. This is the topic of my solo talk submission to SxSW interactive for 2011.
Everyone’s Wrong about Influence. Except your Customers
What is influence? For a decade, Malcom Gladwell's The Tipping Point has served as a touchstone for those who believe that influence resides in the hands of a select few. Not so, says a new generation of marketers. They believe that thanks to the democratizing power of the Internet, anyone can be an Influential.Both camps are wrong.
True influence flows from drawing together people with shared interests. This session focuses on the process of identifying areas of relevancy among your customers and prospects, building community, and allowing others to amplify your influence as you meet their needs.
- Why is everything you know about influence wrong and what should you do about it?
- What doesn't work? The 5 "influence traps" you must avoid
- How do you reach the people who really matter the most?
- What are the best ways to influence the influencers your customers watch for cues?
- Can influence be bought or sold?
While the question of how you measure influence is interesting and valid. As an attendee, I'd wonder, how do I get there in the first place? How do I create/identify/harness/enroll influence? What role does it play in my mix?
I'd want help in understanding how to think about developing/attracting it for my brand/businesses. How you measure it is in results... however, you won't know if those are good, unless you know what you set out to do/change/activate/influence (pardon the pun) and identify red herrings that can take you off course.
If this appeals to you, VOTE here. [live link]
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During a recent chat on Skype with my mother who's had the most influence over my thinking and doing, as we were talking about psychology and today's gold rush on personal influence, she wrote: here's the difference, I never wanted power, I wanted to have an audience. I wanted to be appreciated and loved and not forgotten... therefore I was working in another way.
How are your customers working?
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Additional resources:
Forget Influentials: in Viral Marketing Context Matters
Want to Build Influence? Be a Meaningful Specific
Connecting with Real Influence
[the second time I saw this image on David Armano's blog, we had a conversation about off line influence]
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