Basics: Social influentials and blogging

Whilst browsing Ben Haim’s blog I came across a great series of visuals by David Armano. One of them, shown here, shows the interplay between social media fragmentation and influence. The ripples between individuals nicely illustrate how Social Influentials, one of the subject of today’s Basics post, affect their networks and accelerate the spread of communications.

Social Influentials, e-Fluentials, Digerati, New Media Mavens. The terms are often used interchangeably but they all refer to net users who are more engaged with the online world than average. These individuals participate in online and offline communities, discussing and sharing topics of interest as they do so. They don’t always have leadership roles but they do have authority and influence. Basically, when Socials speak people listen.

One of the main reasons Socials have credibility stems from the fact that they’re seen as community members rather than as outsiders trying to push an agenda. In effect Socials are the opinion leaders in an ongoing series of dialogues and discussions. But because those discussions are web-based Socials have the potential to reach millions of individuals through the use of their personalised web-spaces.

Unsurprisingly, Socials are often regarded as vital in driving the spread of online communications, so much so that companies have recruited Socials to represent their brands online. The Corporate Socials are a relatively new, but potentially important, addition to the social media landscape.

Social influence as a concept isn’t a new one. Social psychologists have long talked about the affect that influence has on our thoughts and behaviours. Effective marketing and PR, leadership, persuasion, conformity, peer pressure and more all involve influencing the individual socially. The strength of that influence depends on the source. Trustworthy, credible or attractive information sources are usually able to exert the most influence. A fact that PR professionals and marketeers are well aware of: When Nike hired Michael Jordan to endorse their shoes they were counting on Jordan’s high profile and sporting credentials to send just the right message to prospective buyers. Jordan had the reach and credibility to heavily influence the purchase decisions of Nike’s target demographic.

In his book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell introduces three personality types responsible for influencing change and social trends: Mavens, Connectors and Salesmen. Each one of these influencers possesses a unique blend of personal and social characteristics that allow them to drive change within their networks. Connectors are natural-born networkers with a wider group of friends and confidantes than average and are able to accelerate the spread of information through the groups they belong to. Mavens are similar in some ways to Connectors but their influence comes from their helpful nature and acknowledged expertise in a particular area. Salesmen are the negotiators of social change and are skilled at persuading people to see a desired point of view or take a desired action.

Gladwell’s model has its problems not least of which is the fact that his assertions are seldom backed up by rigorous peer-reviewed studies. However, his ideas about influential personalities remain a good starting point for understanding social interactions online. In many respects Social Influentials are simply the Mavens, Connectors and Salesmen of the online world. This has given rise to one of the other terms for online social influentials: New Media Mavens. And of course the web, with it’s extraordinary capacity for networked communications and global reach, is an ideal medium for the behaviours exhibited by Gladwell’s three personality types. The internet is purpose built to accelerate communications and social change.

Introducing the Socials

You’ll find New Media Mavens, or Social Influentials, in any online network. Forums, message-boards, blog aggregators.all of them have resident Influentials. Typically they’re active and respected members of the community. Their opinion is valued and they’ve got the admiration if not respect of the people within their network. It’s this blend of active participation and social authority that allow online Influentials to act as gatekeepers for their networks. It’s important to note that this “gatekeeper” status isn’t just down to social standing: Socials are also considered authorities on particular topics.

Every Social is usually part of a number of different social networks. These networks, both on- and off-line, are the real source of any Social’s influence: they allow the Social’s message to be heard extensively and they supply the Social with new and varied information about their area of expertise. It isn’t a coincidence that Socials often have links to industry insiders or are insiders themselves.

To get a better understanding of this aspect of online Social Influence let’s look at these links and connections from the perspective of social network theory.

Social and network theory

Social network theory characterises groups of connected individuals by the depth and frequency of the relationships they share with each other within their respective networks. A relationship, or tie, can be “strong” or “weak” depending on the quality of the connection between two people. Typically weak ties exist between individuals who are in touch with each other infrequently or have a shallow connection. Strong ties usually exist between people with deep connections and a high frequency of contact.

It’s via the weak ties that we’re most likely to gain fresh or novel information. This is because the people we share strong ties with usually access the same networks and information sources as we do. So more weak ties means increased access to novel information and insight. Most individuals usually have a handful of strong ties and a largish amount of weak ties. Connectors, and sometimes Mavens and Salesmen, have far more weak ties than average and this accounts for their sizable influence and knowledge base.

The role that web-based communications play in extending the influence of Socials can’t be understated. A Social can easily access a huge amount of information and can also keep in touch with network members very easily. Most importantly, the connective nature of the web allows Socials to reach a wide audience as well as grow and maintain their network of weak ties.
There’s a huge number of online channels that support Social Influentials. Youtube, social networking sites, message-boards….even emailing lists all offer ways of maintaining and interacting with desired networks. But perhaps the most ubiquious platform for online Social Influentials is the weblog or blog.

The blogosphere

Originally a niche publishing platform used by internet enthusiasts, blogs have become a mainstream media channel used by everyone from soccer moms to nation states and major brands. It’s estimated that a blog is created every second and over a hunded million are online at the moment (Keen, Andrew,. 2008. The Cult of the Amateur). The huge number of these interconnected spaces form the many communities collectively known as the blogosphere.

A visual representation of the blogosphere

The spread of web-based communication has always had a degree of measurability due to its hypertext-based nature and this is doubly true of the blogosphere. Using memetracker sites such as diggit and other social media tools it’s possible to track the spread of discussions and identify which communications and individuals are the most influential.

And of course this knowledge is very useful to marketeers and PR specialists in terms of planning and measuring online communications efforts. Which in turn is vital knowledge for any brand wishing to engage with the blogosphere in order to influence online discussion.

(First posted, August 4 2009 on viralmojo.net)