Followership is a Great Indicator of Influence
Read this first. It’s an article on AdAge arguing that:
“popularity on Twitter or Facebook is just that; it’s the ability to drive behavior that matters.”
Matthew Creamer argues that followership does not equate to influence. I agree that it isn’t perfect, but it ain’t bad either.
Let’s look at the history of influence. Avoiding word of mouth — the most influential, yet difficult to measure — let’s focus on media channels. At first it was simple — you had radio, newspaper, and the big 3 broadcast TV stations. They had the potential to influence a big chunk of the world because of reach. They had huge viewership; the first form of followership. Sure, the content had to moving, thought-provoking, or funny. It turned guys like Hal Riney, Lee Clow, and Ray Rubicam into legends. We knew the right message in these mediums worked to influence ideas and sell product, but we just didn’t know how exactly. We couldn’t measure the conversations it sparked afterward. We didn’t know if it inspired the viewer (a.k.a. follower) to tell a friend or Google the product (well, actually, we know that didn’t happen).
Now we have social media. Conversations are happening online. We can engage with anyone. The playing field is leveled, in a sense. And people and organizations are growing followership by using these channels effectively.
The author looks at Justin Bieber as example #1. He asks:
It’s hard to imagine that Justin Bieber, with his 6.4 million followers, is driving much behavior other than getting people to talk about Justin Bieber, frenetically retweet him, and possibly buy a record. Is that influence?
I ask, isn’t that the point? As a celebrity singer, isn’t that his business goal? I’d say he is driving exactly the kind of behavior he means to.
He also discusses the interesting case of Apple’s Scott Forstall:
Klout gives Mr. Forstall a score of 59 and credits him with “high percentage of amplified content.” Thirty-six thousand people follow him, while he follows just one, Conan O’Brien. Guess how many tweets the appropriately-named Mr. Forstall has posted.
Not a single one.
How’s that for influence?
I would argue, what if he did tweet something important, like an appeal to donate to pay the medical bills of an injured soldier? His influence would be amplified by those 36,000 dormant followers. I guarantee he’d generate more donations than me with my 192 followers. He has influence. Maybe he’s just picking his spots.
He also discusses people who don’t really use Twitter and Facebook, yet are still influential, like Seth Godin. To that point, I would say that Seth uses them as promotional channels because his goal is to drive people to his blog — his social media tool of choice. He needs more than 140 characters because frankly he has too much good stuff to say. It is a good reminder that, although widely popular, Facebook and Twitter are simply tools. You can accomplish many of the same tasks in other ways, like picking up the phone, mailing a letter, or using MySpace (gasp!).
So what creates followership? To me, influence is one thing. If you’ve been influential in some other way, such as a book or a moving speech or a heroic action, you can probably gain followership. Athletic success, good looks, comedy, and interestingness (to borrow a term from Flickr) also leads to followership. If you have followership, odds are you have, or can have, significant influence. That’s why celebrities as spokespeople are as old as the advertisement.
The bottom line is this: marketers are always searching for understanding. Understanding behavior and people is hard because everyone is different. As marketers, we must be OK with this. We can look at actual, individual experiences (i.e. use cases) and learn a lot about influences on behavior. But we have to take everything else as a trend or indication. Services ranging from Klout to Nielsen can only provide trends and indicators of influence. As marketers, we are right to scrutinize their methods. To say that followership doesn’t equate to influence is true to a degree, but also false to a higher degree. If we trust that followership is a strong indicator of influence, chances are we’ll be right.
