I meant to write about this yesterday but didn't have a chance - I can now. In Forget Influentials: in Viral Marketing, Context Matters Valeria Maltoni says that
"…reaching influentials is not the way to reach the many. Duncan Watts says the emergence of a trend does not depend on influentials."
I'm not too sure about that - let's put it this way, the jury is out on that one.
Here's my thinking - I wrote about a paper on the Measurement and Analysis of Online Social Networks back in November 07 where it was said that :
"…One of the findings is for the need of "influentials" at the center of the social network…
"….high-degree nodes in the core are critical for the connectivity and the flow of information in these networks."
To me, "high degree nodes" at the core of a Social Network —- are the Influentials, at least, those perceived to be influential by the community for which the Social Network exists.
Influential Bloggers, for example, Robert Scoble, Jeff Jarvis, Loic Le Meur, are being invited to the exclusive Davos Global Economic Summit next week (boy, do I wish I could get an invite to Davos - and they discuss The World there … how it's run, how it should be run, maybe even how it will be run).
Why? Why bother to invite Scoble, Jarvis and LeMeur if they were not perceived to be influential - if they don't influence the debate for their communities - why bother? In a nutshell - the participation of influentials are the fastest way to spread a message - exactly the opposite of what Maltoni is saying - but she's right that you need a confluence - you can't have influentials without communities that support them - there fore it's a two way thing.
In fact, why would those who run Davos bother to invite anyone - unless they thought they were influential enough?
Yes, you need a community, you need affinity, but you also need a focusing mechanism and compass, and that's what influentials are for.
I can't see, in fact, how you can "reach the many" without influentials - because, fundamentally, most people have a built in "herd" instinct - looking for authorities - their opinion is swayed by influentials.
Does that mean you can't reach the community without influentials? You can, but you'll be more effective if you first figure out who is influentials are for what conversation and give your message to them first - try to win them over and perhaps compromise in order to get buy in.
As far as confluence - I have gotten a good deal of traffic on some of my posts - and yet most of those posts didn't get many comments, except one - and that post touched on a Religious figure - who had several followers - and that produced the comments.
What I'm going to say now - I think that each community is different, each conversation is different - the approach depending on who your dealing with.
One example is the recent appearance of the www.Analyticslife.com Social Network in the Web Analytics community - and I had a role in this debate, in other words, I was an influential for this conversation - along with my Social Media Committee at the WAA.
The SMC Committee, for now, decided the Web Analytics Association will not engage Analyticslife.com - in any way - for a number of reasons that I'll go into with them - but the main one - they fundamentally, by their marketing methods, demonstrated a failure to understand the Web Analytics Community and how they might be approached and served; because of that, they turned off most of the people they contacted, based on the feedback I got.
Can they change? I don't know. Will we review our decision again, maybe in 6 months or a year - maybe. Can people change - yes. But, for now, a decision has been made.
Marketing Methods, Branding - Conversation are all nice things - but they need to be adjusted to whom your trying to reach ….. and by the way, Influentials matter.
