Posts Tagged ‘influence’

I’m still kicking the tires on Google + but from what I’ve seen, it has the potential to be a real power building technology.

Power building for what you ask? How about for building brand awareness, building a voter base, changing the world, or shifting public perceptions.

Photo Credit: Pierofix on Flickr - License

Circles

I especially like the Circles concept. While advising clients on effective ways of using social media for their businesses, I often end up drawing concentric circle diagrams in response to the “who do I connect to” question.

I suggest clients start with the people they know and trust very well (such as employees, family, business partners) and put them in the center. Then in the next ring, they would put the people they trust and have done business with. The next ring would be people they have met locally during mixers, people in their same industry, potential customers, and possible referral sources. The last ring would be people they connect with online for the first time.

This last ring could end up with thousands of people. I wrote about how these networks can be activated in an earlier post.

Google + allows you to manage content per Circle without having to create separate accounts. On Twitter, the only way you can really separate content is by having different accounts. I have my main account (@jesseluna) then I have one that is blogging focused (@niceblog) and another that is focused on film (@cinemaluna). I could have used one account and tweet all the content from one place but I wanted to have more vertical presences with the latter two accounts. In other words, I wanted them to be super focused on the content areas.

The main idea with Circles is that we only want to share certain information with certain groups. We may want to do this for different reasons:

If you have a “Twitter followers” group and also a “Closest supporters” Circle, you probably have a lot more people in the former. Imagine how powerful your network would become if you moved over a lot of your Twitter Followers into your closer networks.

You don’t need thousands of people in your “Closest Supporters” group. Just as in the movie “300″, a strong army of 300 can change the world.

Power Building In Action

Chris Brogan is one of the top bloggers on the Web. He just put out a post entitled “The Google PLUS 50” with 50 things to think about in relation to Google +. Within a few hours of posting the article, it had already received 56 comments and 600 reactions.

Brogan could have written the standard “10 things” kind of post but 50 is a whopping number. With a post like this, he’s able to draw in his blog readers, Twitter followers, and his Facebook fans and get a strong foothold in the new social network.

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Adriel Hampton is active in the Gov2.0 world and is also known for live tweeting his run for Congress. Adriel was one of the first people in my Twitter stream that was actively hooking people up with Google + invites. He directed his Twitter and Facebook followers to “@” him their email addresses and also to request invites using his blog.

Would you be more likely to support a candidate who knew how to work the Social Web and took an early foothold in a new network? Um, Yes.

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As I was finishing up this post, I wanted it to be more gender balanced so I asked Twitter if there were any women out there taking an “early lead” on Google plus, especially community builders. One of my Twitter friends, Susie Wee (@susiewee) replied with a list of three people and one of the three provided a list of more women making an early impact on Google Plus.

Susie Wee – She didn’t list herself but she is a VP at Cisco. I met Susie a couple of years back at Shel Israel’s Twitterville book launch event in San Carlos.

Tatyana Kanzaveli – she is @glfceo on Twitter. She is an executive with Social CRM and an expert event planner. I also met her at the Twitterville event.

Susan Beebe – works in Global Social Media department at Dell. One look at her Google Plus posts and you know why Susie mentioned her. She engages and is helping to expand the platform. She is @susanbeebe on Twitter.

Trisha Liu – Trisha works for ArcSight, an HP company. The big brands are definitely finding their way to Google Plus!

Other women who were mentioned for expanding the platform with powerful and engaging content are Megan Murray, Robyn Miller, and Susan Scrupski.

Final thoughts on Google + power building
First of all, if you’re not on Google + yet and need an invite, feel free to tweet me (@jesseluna) your email address or post it below in the Comments.

Second, it’s not just about setting up the right circles, it’s about delivering content that engages your audience and resonates with them.

I’m looking forward to seeing and hearing about what you do with Google +.


Photo credit: Building – By DCMaster on Flickr – License

One of the biggest obstacles for new Twitter users is figuring out how to best use the medium to serve their needs. If you are looking at building your influence on Twitter, it’s helps to see how top influencers do it.

Web Ecology Project’s recent report, “The Influentials: New Approaches for Analyzing Influence on Twitter, takes a new look at ways to measure influence.

Pure follower counts and follower ratios as measures of influence are not enough. With more sophisticated spam bots and spam networks, influence should be measured based on how people interact.

The authors define Twitter influence as “the potential of an action of a user to initiate a further action by another user.” The study looked at 12 influential Twitter accounts over a period of ten days, then sliced and diced Twitter actions which include Replies, Retweets, Mentions, and Attributions. Depending on how these actions were viewed and their relations between follower counts, the report came up with different ways of measuring influence.

The study’s profiled accounts are: @BarackObama, @CNN, @MCHammer, @Scobleizer, @THE_REAL_SHAQ, @aplusk, @chrisbrogan, @cnnbrk, @garyvee, @ijustine, @mashable, and @sockington.

One way to measure influence is via pure follower count (see below). This is the “old” way of looking at influence since it is possible for spammers to “game” Twitter and work their way to relatively high follower counts. Twitter has been cracking down on this kind of activity but it still exists.

A key observation in the report is that people tend to interact with top Twitterers in different ways. For example, people will retweet or mention news sources like @cnn and @cnnbrk but are not likely to Reply to them. On the other hand, people are very likely to Reply or make and attribution (“name drop”) to social media analysts like @chrisbrogan, @scobelizer, and @garyvee. By looking at these interactions, we could categorize accounts as being Conversationalists or Content Providers. Of course there is overlap but for now we’ll separate them.

If we say that Conversation is gold on Twitter and all influence should be measured on that basis, then the influence chart takes on a much different look.

In the above chart, the tables are turned almost 100%, with super conversationalist @chrisbrogan and @scobleizer leading the pack.

If we analyze things from the Content Providers perspective, then we get the following chart.

It’s interesting to see that @chrisbrogan and @scobleizer are major influencers in this view as well. Not only do they engage but they also provide information that users want to retweet and share with their own networks.

So if you are working on building a strong following on Twitter, you’ll need to have some outstanding content and/or have authentic and powerful conversations.

If you are interested in more of the report’s findings, you can either download the PDF or view the full report online.

The Influentials:
New Approaches for Analyzing Influence on Twitter
By Alex Leavitt
with Evan Burchard, David Fisher, & Sam Gilbert
http://www.webecologyproject.org