We're all a mixture of different skill sets. Some of us come from an analytical background. Others come from a pure communications background. Still others come from a political science background. The fact of the matter is that we all need to be a little bit of all things. What's the ideal make-up look like?
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Sociologist - Understanding how offline societies interact often helps us determine how online societies will perform.
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Psychologist - This goes without saying, but understanding human behaviors is critical. If I put out a piece of content, how is someone going to "feel" about it? (full disclosure: my dad was a forensic psychologist. I tried to major in psychology but, well, quickly changed after the first class. :) )
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Communicator - Obviously, right? You don't need to come from the traditional PR background, but you need to have strong interpersonal communications skills to succeed in social media (really any profession). This also includes the ability to write, and write well.
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Ambassador - You aren't going to come up with a solution that makes everybody happy. Building on the wisdom of Solomon, finding a way to split the baby is often how you survive in this business.
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Hard ass - I was looking for something creative to say here, but "hard ass" was the only thing that came to mind. Listen, there is going to be someone along the way that challenges you. When that happens, you have to be a mixture of all of these things, including hard ass, to survive.
I hesitate to rank any of those in order of importance because I honestly believe it is a blend of all, but my intuition says, particularly in social media, that being a part-time sociologist and psychologist are most critical (probably followed by communicator). We have to be able to answer the "why." Why is someone talking about our brand online? Why do they have such a negative opinion about a member of our management team? Why are they turning to Facebook instead of a forum where the rest of our community lives? Said another way, we have to understand the motivations of our online community.
Nowhere is understanding the underlying motivations more critical than when developing and then implementing an influencer program. This week, I will be participating in the
Radian6 Social 2011 User Conference on a panel about the
value of influence. We're going to be talking about everything from the metrics used to define influence, to how to utilize an influencer list to even something as fundamental as whether influencer lists are necessary. There has been a lot written on the subject lately, and I'm under no delusion that we're going to solve all of the issues associated with influencer analysis, but hopefully we can make a dent.
One of the issues we'll likely be tackling is determining the influencer analysis output. What I mean by that is understanding how we want the list to be used, and what the heck do WE actually mean by influence. In a
post a couple of months back, my friend
Tom Webster pointed out that one of the ways influencer analysis could be improved is understanding motivations. I couldn't agree more. We have to know what influences people, why they are talking, what messages they respond to and how they want to interact with brands. If you can't answer those, your influencer analysis output is going to be flawed.
You'll never completely answer the "why" using listening data, as Tom noted in his post. The only way you truly know is by asking (and yes, I know, people can lie). So, as you start working with influencers what can you do to fully understand the "why" when asking your community may not be practical at that stage? A few things:
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Use your listening data - Yes, I know I just said you can't rely on this solely, but it can be helpful in gaining a basic understanding of why people do what they do online when referencing your brand.
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Asking the influencers themselves - In theory, you should know through your research what types of content communities react to from these influencers. But, why (there's that word again) not ask them? You might find a totally different answer from the blogger/forum poster/mainstream press member, etc... then what your research is telling you. That's valuable intelligence.
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Surveying the online community - No, social media listening is never going to fully replace surveys. They have value. No, they may not be a truly representative sample of your online community. Yes, there is valuable intelligence to be had from using a survey instrument.
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Knowing your motivations - Why do you want to interact with influencers? Is it to increase awareness in the form of share of voice? Is it to improve sentiment about your brand? Is it to build long-term brand value. Not only should we understand the motivations of our community, but we need to understand why we're doing what we're doing. Only then can you truly grasp the entire landscape.
We have to be one part psychologist, one part sociologist, one part communicator, one part ambassador and another part hard ass to succeed in this social media world. Whether that's participating in social media more broadly, or developing an influencer identification program answering the "why" is critical. We're not going to solve this dilemma during our panel at the Radian6 conference, but likely through more informed conversation online and off.
Think back to the programs you've built using social technologies... Have you sufficiently answered the why internally and the why within your community? If not, it isn't too late to course correct depending on your findings.
