A social influencer is someone who spots something, thinks its cool, and influences other people to think the same. A social influencer can also spot something, think its very uncool, and influence many others to think the same thing. Social influencers also tend to band together and social media tools like Twitter and Facebook have made it much easier for enormous groups of social influencers to band together and either make (e.g. the iPad) or break (e.g. a politician’s pension) a product/service/brand.
The trouble for marketing people is identifying social influencers. However, good news may be on the way. Two Forrester analysts Josh Bernoff and Augie Ray say they have developed a framework that allows marketers identify and measure how people on social media sites influence each other. They call it “peer influence analysis”.
The two analysts say they have built a formula that will help marketers attract the three main levels of influencers – they being: social broadcasters, mass influencers, and social influencers.
Social broadcasters tend to have mass reach and while consumers gain awareness of products and services from social broadcasters, they trust them the least and will do more research of their own once they hear about the product.
Mass influencers are groups of tens of thousands to millions of people for each product/brand. Friends turn to them for opinions before making a purchase.
Finally, social influencers are the majority of influencers and are more benign than the other two groups. Augie Ray says they are people who are not as technically savvy, and who require marketers to make it “drop-dead easy” for them to share information.
Aside from the various terms and categories, what Bernoff and Ray are saying is very simple – word of mouth online isn’t random chatter, it is something measurable. ‘Peer influence analysis’ shows us how people affect one another. A very powerful tool if used properly. Bruce Campbell has it.
More on the report here http://forrester.typepad.com/groundswell/

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