We deal with them every day. We spend hours crafting pitches, preparing background documents and making sure they’re happy. But how do we decide who is and isn’t an influencer?
I was fortunate to be able to attend the Social Fresh conference in Portland (for some other takeaways, you can read them here) recently and I wanted to know how some of the attendees defined who they considered an influencer.
As you can see, the definitions covered the spectrum. In a world where everybody is a publisher, we need to be wary of who we call an influencer. As PR practitioners, we are trying to maintain gold standards while making sure we are getting our clients the best results possible.
Time management
The biggest challenge on PR pros in a world where “influencer” is a fluid term is managing our time asks. Sometimes it’s the smallest of outlets that take the most time.
So how do we decide where to spend our time? In my opinion, we can look at some simple metrics to determine how we allocate our most precious resource.
Impact: This isn’t about eyeballs. This is about action. When this person publishes an article, do people listen and act? Do they generate traffic, signups or sales? Spend some time with them.
Engaged: If they seem to genuinely care about the announcement, chances are they can become a champion for you. Spend some time with them.
Audience: There are two parts to this: Passion and interaction. If the person’s readers are commenting and a conversation generally happens around each post, this helps the “long tail” of an announcement. Spend some time with them.
So, who should you not spend some time with? Quite simply, anybody who can’t help you define your goals.
Now it’s your turn: How do you define an influencer? What effects your perception of a potential pitch recipient? What causes you to say no?
Social Media has become a catch-all term for just about any content distribution on the Web. Who would have thought that two years ago, a press release would be considered social media?
But here we are. Anybody who is blogging, twittering, publishing photos, friend-feeding, Viddler-ing etc… is social media-ing. But are they? I say that social media is the platform. The platform allows us as content creators to develop content that want to share. From there, it’s a matter of how it’s used.
Social Marketing
Social Marketing is the bulk of what social media is used for. There is a distinct difference between using Twitter to discuss the banal details of your life and using Twitter to distribute 20% off coupons for your restaurant. Using the tools available to you through social media in order to generate direct sales is social marketing.
Social Marketing is often thinly veiled and that is where some of the frustration confusion occurs. When “consultants” offer their services through social media they are participating in social marketing. But it is veiled as social media. Simply sharing ideas, right? But the intent is to ultimately lead to a sale.
Using content sharing services to promote your business and services is a great use of social media as a platform. Enabling your customers to evangelize and tell your story for you is one of the greatest ways to build your brand and message. Social media as a platform also enables those people to reach each other.
Social Networking
We all like to meet people. We all like to interact with humans. After all, if you remove the ability to physically connect with the people we interact with online, social media would shrivel to nothing.
Being able to use social media to share pictures of my pug or arrange to meet some friends are great benefits of the technology platforms that comprise social media. In fact, one of my favorite aspects of social media as a platform is it’s opt in. I get out of it what I put in and if I choose not to participate, the world doesn’t end.
Plenty of stories exist about people using social media to network their way into a job or raise funds for a charity or even find a spouse. Being able to foster relationships, both professional and personal, is one of the great uses of social media as a platform.
Social Education
If you are out to share information (like this blog?) or distribute a message then you are using social media as a means to educate. Social education utilizes the alternative definition of social. In this instance, social is a reflection of society as a whole. Building communities around lifestyles or the environment is an emerging use of social media as a platform.
The emergence of the “green” lifestyle and social awareness in general is able to reach new levels thanks to social media as a platform. Video blogs, micropayments and the Twestival for charity:water are great examples of our society taking advantage of the innovations in social media technology that have emerged recently.
What Does This Mean?
It means that there’s no right or wrong way to use social media. It means that we need to be aware of the progression of the platform and how we as marketers and social beings can utilize it in innovative ways.
Just because we’re out in the “social media-sphere” doesn’t mean we know what’s happening. This shift that is occurring around us changes daily. Having a platform to build on and capture our every thought and action is both intriguing and totally frightening.
What this means is that social media is here to stay. How will you use it?