Fleeting Influence on the Web

I go to a bunch of events, and these last few days I was a bit of a lurker at IZEAFest in Orlando. I hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting Ted Murphy before, and I not only enjoyed him and his personality, but the event was full of some fresh faces and great information.

Aaron Brazell did a keynote on Saturday morning that was refreshing. He talked about influence, and true to fashion, Aaron didn’t pull any punches. He pointed out some very compelling bits about the notion of influence, which prompted me to revisit this topic through the lens of what I’ve learned in the last little while.

I have trouble with the idea of influence as it’s often presented. It’s kind of like authority, or trust, or worth. It’s in the eye of the beholder. And when it comes to business, we have to remember that – much like sales – influence is a result of your work, not the strategy itself.

When you’re trying to find someone that’s influential in your industry or in relation to your business, you need to be looking for people that encourage and compel others to listen and take action.

That doesn’t mean that the influencers in your sphere are always the ones with impressive follower or friend counts, or blog stats, or even money or press. If they have only five people paying attention, but those five people are always motivated to act as a result, you’ve found yourself someone that can move things to a new place. Having a platform (i.e. eyeballs) only gives someone potential for distribution. It doesn’t give them the trust, authority, or reputation that makes impressions or inspires others to build something bigger.

Influence also has a dark side. It can be thrown around in terms of threats, or fear, or subterfuge, or using established authority for “bad” things.  There are people who are compellingly contrarian and stir up trouble or controversy for a living. There are bullies. There are insecure, angry saboteurs that are skilled in finding an audience but lack the imagination to find something constructive to do. Influence isn’t always something to be used for good, and it behooves businesses to remember that, too.

The other thing that events teach me? And remind me, every time?

Influence on the web is incredibly fragile. The web gives us one set of lenses through which to see things. And depending on if you look through one or several at a time, it can present a wholly different picture of who someone is. Collecting a following does not equate with influence on the web. Influence, to me, implies a consistent ability to empower others over time. True influence has lasting effects long after the influencer has left the center of the spotlight.

And as I watch people around me that I admire, and whose work I believe in, I see how much that  notion of “influence” online is made or broken when the in-person, human element comes into play. There are people whose work leaves me invigorated, inspired, and challenged to do something more. There are people with whom I have conversations and I walk away wanting to be better, to CREATE something. And never – NEVER – has that ever been solely proportional to their “ranks” in the fickle popularity contest that is the world of the web.

True influence is not created, nor is it synonomous with popularity or notoriety. Influence is earned, and it only reaches its potential in the hands of those who are inspired by it. The results of influence that matters won’t be evident for months, or even years. And they’ll be present in the collective works of those who have been motivated. Those who have gone and done.

In the wake of Aaron’s presentation, I had someone come up to me and chat for a bit, mentioning that he considered me an “influencer”.  I asked him why, and he said it was because he “heard about me” often enough that he figured I must know my stuff.

I asked him to hold that judgment for a few years, and tell me if the evidence of my hard work was still present somewhere without me, long after the fishbowl forgets me. If he could find ways that I’d made an impact on the people and things around me, for the better, and in ways that put them at the center of the brilliance, not me. Things that will last long beyond Twitter, or this blog, or the days when people recognize my curly, crazy hair in a crowd.

Then – and only then – would I believe that I have ever influenced a thing.

What influences you? Think carefully. Think beyond the web, and beyond business. What you discover might surprise you. It has me.

photo by urthstripe

Community Inside the Walls

This week on Friday, I’ll be speaking at the Module 09 Midwest Digital Conference about building internal and external communities. The internal bit is something that I don’t think gets talked about enough, but it’s something incredibly powerful about what’s happening with all this social communication stuff.

(By the by, if you’re going to be in Detroit and haven’t yet signed up for the conference, come do so here, or even sign up for the streaming version of the event for just $25. They’re letting me hang out with the likes of Shannon Paul, Ken Burbary, my CEO Marcel Lebrun, and Chris Brogan.)

Your Community Doesn’t Classify Social Media

To me, part of the power of social communication is uniting disparate parts of a business that haven’t talked to each other in years. Maybe ever. Why? Because the outreach you do out onto the web has implications far beyond whether or not people heard your brand messages.

People want to talk about your product and what makes it great (or not so great). They want to talk about your customer service, your executive team, your charitable and community initiatives, your website and the article that got published about you last week. They want to talk about their experiences with you, for better or worse.

Your customers don’t park social media neatly in a “communications” bucket, nor do they care whether you put it in PR or marketing or customer service or all of the above. They probably don’t even identify or label the social media they’re using, or consciously choose a “social” tool over another.

They’re just trying to open up a line of communication to your company.

Inside the Firewall, Things Need to Mesh

So given all of that, if you’re a community person inside a company, it’s my view that part of your job is uniting the clans inside your own walls to work together. If your customers aren’t distinguishing between the buckets of marketing or customer support or public relations, your team for approaching outreach and engagement needs to be multi-disciplinary.

As a community professional, it’s partially my role to not only build community within and among our customers, but to help our internal teams work better together. I’m often the conduit for a lot of information and insights from our community. And I also need to touch lots of areas of the business – business development, product support, communications, and content – so that we’re all working together to ultimately meet the needs of the people that drive our business.

We need to communicate well, be able to track our engagement and outreach efforts, and collaborate as a team on the best way to support our company and community goals along side each other. There’s just no way you can keep this stuff confined to the PR department and ever hope to scale it or have it make a fundamental, positive impact on your business.

So I’ll be talking this week about some of the things that define strong community management, both inside the walls and out. And if I don’t see you in Detroit, I’ll have the presentation up on Slideshare with some notes for your review later on.

What else do you think folks need to know about how to build and bridge communities?

My Relationship ROI

Photo "borrowed" from David Alston via Flickr

Liz Strauss is putting on a conference in May here in Chicago called SOBCon. If you’re not familiar, you can check out the site here and see what it’s all about. Liz and Terry Starbucker have gathered an amazing slate of speakers, and I can’t wait to not only meet a few people I’ve not yet, but gather with this intimate group of folks to talk the business of social media for a few days.

The SOBCon team has also put together a cool Blog It, Earn It promo to get a discount on registration (check it out here). And while I’m not putting in for the discount, I did think it was important for me to articulate, in a nutshell, why relationships drive everything that I do.

The Mechanized World

So much is automated now. There’s little you can’t do online anymore. You can pay your bills automatically. You can read the newspaper from your iPhone, or even have a book read aloud to you. You can give to charity in an instant and from the comfort of your couch, or order a pizza online.

The trouble is, there are some things I don’t *want* to be mechanized, and my relationships with other humans are one of them. It’s probably why I get so crabby about lousy marketing that comes in the form of mass email or junk-clicky Twitter DMs. I get an email and for a moment, I’m excited that someone is reaching out to connect with me. Then I realize it’s not a someone at all, but a something that’s got me on a list somewhere.

Why Analog Matters

I’m as digitized as you get, and it would be hypocritical of me to say otherwise. My laptop, iPhone, and associated applications are vital to my work and my day to day function. So they’re always a part of me, a little bit.

But I can’t hear you laugh on my iPhone. I can’t catch the glimmer in your eye when we share an inside joke and try not to snicker at the dinner table. I can’t hug your Twitter handle when you’ve had a crappy day, and I can’t reassure your email that your business idea is a brilliant one. Words on paper (or a screen) are easy. You can’t multitask personal interaction. It doesn’t work that way, and that’s why it’s that much more valuable to connect with someone on a human level, even if the social tools are what facilitate that.

The Return

Relationships make you feel valuable. When you’ve built a connection with someone based on mutual interest, or affection, or trust, you’ve created something that’s not transactional, but symbiotic. You’re tapping into a mutual feeling of comfort, camraderie, even of familiarity. When I find the human element in our interaction – even if that’s through the interwebs – you’ve now become more than your business card to me. You’ve become a multi-faceted person with an intricate set of associations in my mind (sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. )

And tomorrow, when you need my help, or I need your insight, we have a foundation to build on. What I adore and have talked about many times is how social communications have accelerated and amplified that process through online channels. Made those interactions better, more personal, more accessible. So you’re more than a contact in my list. You’re a reference point for me personally, professionally, creatively.

And in a world where the pace is blistering, the technology overwhelming, the business world a bit savage and our attention ever splintered, I take heart knowing I’ve got more than a “contact list”. I’ve got real relationships with real people, and  so many new ways to connect with them every day. And compared to the people with nothing more than a pile of business cards and vague associations, I’ll win each and every time.

I’ll be at SOBCon in May and can’t wait to meet you there. Won’t you share your take on the ROI of Relationships, and what they mean to you?

PodCamp Toronto: Insights Outside the Sessions

The great thing about the unconference format – specifically PodCamp – is that as much learning and insight can happen in the hallways or the social settings as can take place in the sessions themselves. Getting such a pile of people together in one spot makes for some super interesting and diverse perspectives. Here’s a few things I took away from the event:

Challenges We’re Still Facing

We need to keep thinking outside our own backyards. Unless your business model hinges on local for a reason, realize that the social and new media – and business – landscape extends far beyond your geographic limitations.

We’ve gotta stop using ourselves as the benchmark. I’m still hearing lots of “this is how I do things” instead of “this is how other people are doing things.” The former is relevant to share with others and help them learn. The latter is relevant if you’re actually trying to do business in the business world with the media you’re making.

If you want to create revenue from new and/or social media, you have to know what the people with the money are willing to pay for. The media has to support something larger than itself. Cool is not a business or revenue model.

Tough love: still lots of excuses about why measuring social media is hard. Or why being solo limits your capacity to scale. Or why our media is brilliant but we can’t sell it to a paying client. The hard truth is that this stuff takes work. Get out there and start executing. Build stuff. Form coalitions. Act. Make mistakes, learn, and execute again. Nothing has ever gotten done by talking about it for the 30th time. See below for the upside of this one.

Happy Truths

Generosity and curiosity abound. People are willing to share amazing amounts of knowledge and information, and there are lots of people still seeking even the most basic of answers. If you don’t have the answer to something, ask. Someone does. Or there are people willing to help you find it.

The discussion is moving forward on important things like the right metrics for new media, ethics and transparency, treating our practices like businesses, and the potential issues and risks that come with online omnipresence. They’re not easy discussions, but these are the things that will take social media from cute to enterprise-viable.

There *are* people doing the doing, making things happen in this space, even quietly. See also Dave Fleet, Jeremy Wright, Bob Goyetche, Angela Misri, Sean Power, Julien Smith, Whitney Hoffman, Hugh McGuire, Sue Murphy, Dave Delaney. (Do I need to list Chris Brogan here? Okay. Him too.) You can learn from them. I am.

Meeting people in person still kick’s Twitter’s ass. And Canada still has great beer.

Special thanks to the great PCTO organizing team for putting on an event worth freezing for.

Connect?

I’m going to be at a whole pile of events this coming year, including the Main Street National Conference, SXSW Interactive, SES NYC, the Module Midwest Digital Conference, SCIP International, Inbound Marketing Summit San Francisco, and SOBCon 2009 just to name the next eight weeks. If you’re headed to any of these or are in the area, let’s be sure and link up somehow.

So what do you get out of these events? If you were at PCTO, what did you learn and observe? I’d love to hear more about your experiences.

Five in the Morning

Super cool Steve Woodruff asked me if I’d guest post for his kick-butt Five in the Morning series. And since I’d probably eat sawdust if Steve asked me to, here are a few posts that ran across that I think you should see, too, as part of my “Anything But Another Twitter Post” episode of FITM:

Kellye Crane has a fantastic guest post at Kami Huyse’s Communication Overtones. She makes a careful distinction between that dreaded word “messaging” and truly valuable messages. I like her take.

Beth Kanter has yet another substantive post, this time about the ROI of online communities, and by that she means Return on Insight. (I’m especially keen on this topic given my new jobby job.) She’s been writing some killer stuff lately about the value of listening and engagement, so a stroll back through her previous posts is time well spent.

Liz Strauss has a gift sometimes for getting straight to the heart of something that many folks are thinking but can’t manage to articulate. She does it again here, where she asks how you trust someone you can’t see.

Jonathan Kranz makes a hell of a lot of sense over on the MarketingProfs Daily Fix when he says that marketers are the problem when we’re creating “relationships” when there might not be any. I’ve seen this more than once.

And for last, something completely different. Jon Swanson. Moving, articulate, wise. Reverberant silence. Go read.

So if you’re finding Steve for the first time:

Subscribe to Steve Woodruff’s StickyFigure blog
Follow Steve on Twitter: @SWoodruff

And if you’re finding me for the first time, how about subscribing to my feed or following me on Twitter so you can visit me again?

Thanks, Steve, for letting me share this week. Hope you slept in.

Photo Credit: doug88888