The other day I reviewed Philip Sheldrake’s book on the Business of Influence, but I didn’t realize I’d use something I just finished reading as a formation for a position in this space, so soon. A chance conversation led to an interesting thought about what is missing this iteration of existing influencer platforms I have looked at and reviewed lately (Klout/PeerIndex/TRAACKR/mPACT/SocMetrics/et all, etc) and probably a half dozen or more that I haven’t reviewed or don’t yet know of.
Philip said that we should devote as much time to being influenced as who we’re trying to influence. My recent speaking engagements here and in London brought back feedback from some of the platforms (I’ll leave them unnamed) that went like this…….
Customer wants a customized Influencer list for Blue Widgets, writes a keyword query finding Blue Widget influecers and gets back a list that has irrelevant names of people on it that the customer knows for sure should not be on the list.
Customer gets annoyed at Influencer Platform and decides to pass on trying it out – can’t tell the difference between what he or she is getting here vs. dozen others, that all produce varied lists, with little overlap.
The problem, as I see it, is there is no where in these platforms to put yourself in, as the focal point. How can you get a customized list of influencers for “you” if there is not way to put “you” into the platform?
Suppose your wanted to sort a list by influential by what is important to you, or a particular stakeholder/group within a brand (or, as Sheldrake puts it – be influenced by the Influencer, though he meant it in an entirely different way that I’m using it), the other polarity – how can you do it with just a keyword query that just focuses on the attributes of the influential, without considering your own preferences and bias?
I was speaking to a friend the other day, where we discussed this problem of differentiation in a field where many types of industries need influential lists, but they all have their own bias and requirements – just putting in series of keywords will identify a list of people who are using those words prominently and sort them by a propriety algorithm, but is that enough?
Probably not – especially as there is no clear way to add the customer’s own profile, needs and wants, in the algorithm, which would personalize the list. This is much like putting out own “location” in a mapping program, along with our destination, which then gives us a route to get there.
I will have more to say about this in a few weeks, as I’d like to consider how to illustrate this gap, with a few examples, which I will stay away from tonight.
But I will leave you with this thought – when we are traveling to a location, and we what to know how to get there – don’t we need to put in our location, first?
