I’ve been amazed watching the sheer volume of conversation around the Fast Company Influence Project. Can’t we all agree once and for all that it’s a really poor representation of influence online? I mean, spreading a unique URL in the hopes that someone clicks on it, signs up and starts the project themselves is an appropriate metric for influence? In the words of my friend, David Mullen, “hogwash!”
Amber Naslund wrote a truly excellent post (please check out Brass Tack Thinking if you haven’t already) in response to the project that received a lot of fantastic comments and sparked a question in my own mind: Are we making the definition of online influence harder than it needs to be? I tend to think the answer is an emphatic yes!
I’ll agree that it’s very difficult to make sweeping generalizations on who (or what) is influential across verticals. I’ll also agree that it’s difficult to make assumptions on influence given the diversity of goals that every brand has online. However, I think what we’re talking about can be boiled into a relatively simple equation: Individual Influence + Outlet Influence = Overall Influence. Let’s hit each of those individually… Oh, one quick note – I’m only providing metrics for demonstration purposes. These shouldn’t be used in your campaign unless you feel that they align with your program’s goals. Please don’t cut and paste otherwise I’ll hunt you down :-). Anyway…
- Individual Influence – Each brand is going to have a different definition for how influential a person within their micro community is on other members of that community. What we’re really wanting to know is how relevant is their content (related to a particular), how many people are they (or could they) reach, how much content are they producing (without spamming us) and how often their content is picked up by others. There are metrics you can obtain pretty easily that underlies each of these categories, but I think it makes sense for you to start at that level and match metrics to each category that also align with your goals.
- Outlet Influence – Again, every brand is going to place varying weights of importance on the different channels. Some will place more emphasis on blogs, while others will think forums are most important. Ideally, to define influence within your online community, you’re taking into account a variety of channels, but understand that most aren’t going to go to that level. Whether you’re looking at inbound links for a blog, or total visits for a mainstream news outlet, or total authors on a forum, your goal is to quantify (ideally you’re looking at a bunch of metrics) how strong that Web site's strength
