Influence cannot be reflected by a single metric, and influence does not equal popularity. The rapid growth of social media has warped our concept of influence and too many have mistakenly conflated influence with popularity. The size of one's audience (readers, fans, friends, followers, etc.) cannot be an accurate determination of one's authority and ability to drive actions. My apologies in advance to Bieber Nation. Justin Bieber may have over 6 million followers on Twitter and may be influential in some circles, but his voice carries little weight in most markets (e.g. enterprise security or convection ovens).
When calculating influence, we need to first consider relevancy. An influential journalist or blogger must actually be talking about your market. They've got to be writing on topics that matter to your audience. These are the individuals who can capture the attention of your market and help you spread your message where it matters most.
By ignoring or undervaluing topical relevancy when considering influence, marketing professionals run the risk of putting their energy and focus in the wrong places. And 'influential' journalists become inundated with inappropriate and irrelevant PR pitches that go straight to the trash bin. It's a lose/lose situation for everyone involved.
2. Marketers Need to Do More Than Just Make Lists
Good marketing and PR entail far more than making lists of your top influencers. At the end of day, successful PR is all about building relationships, person to person, not person to score.
Metrics and scores are indeed valuable. When viewed through the lens of topical relevancy, they can do a fantastic job of identifying a set of potential influencers and help you to determine where you should focus the majority of your efforts. But good marketers need to dig a little deeper than the simple number. We can't assume that the diet pill (no matter how well engineered) can solve all of our challenges.
What Does It Mean?
As a PR professional or marketer, it's your responsibility to find out what truly matters to those that matter to your market. In other words, you've got to understand what your influencers actually care about. Dig into their previous blog posts and articles. Skim their clip files. See where they've been cited and interviewed. What are they talking about? What are they saying? What were they interested in last month; what do they care about this week?
It's then and only then that you can move beyond generic communications and begin to build relationships and create personal pitches that are far more likely to resonate with your influencer and earn the response you want. Working with influencers can be immensely beneficial in marketing -- you just need to be smart about it.
More Business Resources from Mashable:
- 10 Online Strategies for Your Next Product Launch
- What to Look For When Hiring a Community Manager
- 8 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Get More Out of Twitter
- 5 Masterminds Redefining Social Media Marketing
- 24 Professional Events & Organizations for Social Media Strategists