Note: this is an unusually long post, but hopefully worth it. It’s an important strategic debate for any company or organization.

An interview with Duncan Watts in Brand Week sparked a VERY heated debate with an associate of mine. (HT to jackie huba via ben mcconnell)

Watts is sometimes referred to as the “anti-Malcolm Gladwell” because he is extremely skeptical of the idea that so-called “influencers” can be reliably discovered and effect the growth of a product.

Watts believes that:

“you're just as likely to spread a message or product by targeting a random group of consumers as you would by going after so-called influencers”

When I sent this note out, I wrote that:

My spin on it is that this validates that “Raving Fans” whether “influential” or not are even more critical. Of course, I’m biased ;-)

My email sparring partner wrote:

You are fooling yourself if you think influence doesn’t matter. 

But, here’s the thing that he missed.

I don’t think influence doesn’t matter.

It matters.

And it matters A LOT.

I think the issue of “targeting influencers” is that you don’t really know, for the most part, who the influencer will be on a given purchase, so it becomes an Return on Effort question. 

For example, how would Asus know that it was Maddie Grant of SocialFish who finally influenced me to buy a netbook? 

But that’s one data point.

Let’s focus on the fact that your marketing resources are limited.

My argument centers on an opinion that you are better off allocating more of your resources to Raving Fans and your community to go out and spread the word for you than to go after “influencers.” I call this the ROI on Little People.

That’s not to say ALL.

You should definitely designate a portion of your efforts to identifying and cultivating relationships with people you think are the “influencers” in your industry, tell Remarkable stories, and persuade them of the important of what you are doing.

Hedge your bets. No question.

But put more eggs in the Raving Fans basket than the Influencer one.

And they are not divergent approaches either.

Your fans can get you to the “influencers” as well (and perhaps even do it more effectively and authentically than you could).

It’s why Yes To Carrots (full disclosure: client) began a “nominate a blogger” program, so that our fans can point to the people who actually influence them and their network, not whom we think influence them.

It’s how my fans got me to Guy Kawasaki

You can spend a lot of time going after the people you think are “influencers,” but as Watts points out, you don’t really know who influences whom for a given purchase. You know historically, but not always forward-looking.

I think Rob Walker’s book, Buying In, touches on this well in terms of how an unforeseeable trend got started by the bike messenger subculture in Portland loving Pabst Blue Ribbon.

However, Emmanuel Rosen’s breakdown of hubs in Anatomy of Buzz on pages 99-107 is probably the best analysis of how Watts’ theory fits into marketing and how it should guide your strategic allocation of resources.

He says:

“In the end, it really depends on how much it costs you to reach these influentials and what you get in return.

In fact, this is what Watts and Dodds themselves say: ‘Whether or not the additional impact of influentials justifies paying special attention to them-versus, for example, focusing on some other groups, or even recruiting individuals at random-is therefore a matter that will depend, possibly delicately, on the various costs associated with different strategies, and the particular details of the influence network.”

He continues that:

“influentials-consist of about 15 percent of the population and are responsible for 30 percent of buzz, an acknowledgement that 70 percent of buzz is generated by non-hubs. This is important. It means that marketers should work on all fronts and that they can do a lot without first locating hubs.”

And I think that last point is the key one.

Do a lot first, then locate the hubs (unless, of course, you know all of the possible influencers personally and can just give them a call…then, do that first).

Plus, when you do locate the hubs/influencers, you’ll have good stories to tell them.

I am a Raving Fan of Gladwell. Read The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers. Loved them all.

The thing that I can’t get out of my head, however, is that the Tipping Point came out in the era pre-social networks.

As Clay Shirky points out in Here Comes Everybody (and in 100 places since then) the big change is that now all of the people who surround the center of influence (call them “influencers” or “mavens” or whatever) can talk to each other.

And the two-way nature of communication means that the “influencers” are listening/interacting more with the “little people” more than ever before thus potentially further increasing the impact of your Raving-Fan/community centric efforts.

Perhaps this is an “All Marketers Are Liars” moment and I am telling myself a story I want to believe, so feel free to challenge.

However, this discussion leads me to the conclusion that focusing on being Remarkable and identifying, cultivating, and activating your Raving Fans (the core of Community Driven Marketing-here’s the PDF) is probably the most cost-effective way to get your initial momentum on a new company, product, service, or initiative.

If that core group likes it, then (again, assuming limited resources), you go out to the Influencers to help amplify the story.

Clearly, you need to find the balance in the two strategies and it’s not all or nothing. It’s just a question of when you step on the gas for each.

A debate that will rage for years, I am sure. 

 

 

 

Get Never Stop Marketing by email.
Subscribe here