Top Influence Marketing News: From Social Curation to Measuring Employee Influence

July 13, 2012

This week’s roundup features some rather interesting conversations ranging from enhancing influencer marketing campaigns and compensation for social curation to the impact of groupthink in social network

Let’s jump in and explore what’s pushing buttons in the world of influence.

But First, A Thank You from Appinions

We’d like to offer a few hat tips to our colleagues in the influence space that were kind enough to include Appinions in recent conversations. The first came courtesy of Jason Falls from Social Media Explorer, who provided a review of the Realtime Report’s Guide to Influence Measurement Tools. We were thrilled to be included in Tonia Ries’ excellent report, which is why we’re offering a limited number of free copies for our audience. We appreciate Jason for spreading the word about the report and encouraging folks to get the free download from us. You can check out Jason’s post here: A Guide to Influence Measurement Tools Worth Reading.

The second mention was in a compelling piece in Mashable by Michael Ogince of Big Fuel, who offers up a healthy plate of influencer marketing tips for brands and marketers in 7 Tips to Enhance Influencer Marketing.

A big thank you to Jason Falls and Michael Ogince for their time, energy and attention.

Now, on to the top influence marketing news of the week!

Social curation site Fancy to compensate users for their influence

Seems like just a few weeks ago that we were discussing Chris Abraham and Growmap’s debate on whether blogger outreach is earned or paid media (well actually, it was a few weeks ago).

Now it’s Fancy, a social curation site, that is rolling out a program to compensate its users for their efforts to curate and share products. Where Klout and Kred turn influence into points, Fancy is taking it a step further and offering users a percentage of the transaction value (in the form of credit for now) for items that they share with friends on social networks.

To learn more about Fancy’s social curation evolution, read the full article here – Social curation site Fancy to compensate users for their influence

Wielding Influence: 5 Problems and 6 Solutions

Matt Rosenberg of SAY Media goes right for the heart of the debate on influence in marketing and whether we’re at risk of abusing the term to the point of it meaning nothing.

In his post on the iMedia Connection Blog, Matt argues that we shouldn’t bank on the myth of influence. Instead, marketers and brands can focus our energy on how we can work “inside social mechanisms,” namely the platforms and technology that empower consumers to find and enjoy the content that we share.

Matt digs in by challenging marketers to focus more of our energy on what we can do to move people, in shareable ways, versus emphasizing influence as a means to gain mindshare.

It’s an interesting take on the role of influence as a marketing discipline, to say the least.

Get the full scoop from Matt Rosenberg - Wielding Influence: 5 Problems and 6 Solutions

Inescapable Groupthink

In his blog post, Geoff Livingston takes a swan dive into the concept of groupthink as an “inescapable behavior pattern in social networks.”

In his dissection of how people typically behave when a peer adapts an idea, action or product, Geoff offers this:

“Influence lies in the collective rather than the individual oracle, and that’s why groupthink prevails.”

What’s compelling about his argument is that the interactions with those closest peers in our networks and communities are what’s really making things happen – not the voices on high, or as Geoff so lovingly refers to as the “large, top-down media voices and online pundits.”

Read Geoff’s full take on groupthink and its relationship to influence – Inescapable Groupthink

Measuring An Employee’s Worth? Consider Influence

Salesforce.com’s Chatter system released a new feature in the Spring called “Influencer,” which essentially aims to measure an individual’s influence within their company by capturing, for example, how a co-worker responds to your posts on a company social network.

It’s intriguing for many reasons, most especially because it could bring the world of influence to the hallowed halls of employee performance reviews, offering companies a way to measure how much weight an employee carries among peers.

As you can imagine, this caused a pretty lively debate in the post comments.

Read the full article at Fast Company – Measuring An Employee’s Worth? Consider Influence

As always, we’d love to hear more of your thoughts on the topics above, so please share in the comments below.

Image credit: Moyan Brenn

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