The brand benefits of CRM and Social Marketing Programs are obvious.  Value exchange creates loyalty and potentially advocacy – By providing a benefit you will be most successful if you also consider the value expectations of your audience. Providing value will ensure your customers continue engaging with your brand in the social landscape. In the sense of making brand advocates of your consumers your exchange might even inspire them to share the value you provide with others.

In terms of marketing communications, many of your online ‘friends’ or fans will only remain a ‘friend’ as long as you keep providing a value exchange in your services, content, newsletters, tweets or updates. The same value exchange already exists in other services that include loyalty programs, memberships and clubs where there are high levels of consumer interaction and the value of being involved has tangible rewards. Its also good to remember that these activities sometimes have a high cost.  Even if you are on smaller programs of involvement the exchange still needs to be in place, small tokens of appreciation always work well.

The ubiquitous social term ‘friend’ should not be mistaken as being similar to friends in the real world. The value of exchange needs to be balanced and considered for the long-term relationship. Short term goals or sales in favour of a brand might not sustain a relationship withits  circle of friends. Brands cannot assume that they have a bond of friendship strong enough to get away with delivering content that benefits the brand alone or doesn’t maintain the relationship. This one way relationship will not work online anymore. So if someone becomes your online ‘friend’ it is the brand that needs to earn the friendship and nurture the relationship, not them. Make sure you continue to deliver value of service, content etc in your exchange with your online ‘friends’ or they will move onto other ‘friends’ ready to give them attention.

So what benefits and value are you providing for your consumers beyond your product?

Its good to reflect why this remark maybe relevant. In recent presentation by an Brian Giesen, Ogilvy PR executive in Australia , where Ross Dawson presented the Influencer Landscape framework ( see above ) he attributed  the reasons of the shift in consumer belief to the following researched facts.

• – 75% of people don’t believe that companies tell the truth in advertising.
• - In the US 81% look to word of mouth (be it online or offline ) for decisions.
• - Trust in Media Editorial is is at a low 56%.

No wonder the citizen journalist in us is alive and well, albeit with the aiding and abetting of the new wave of  social communications technologies.

The Driving Forces

The Democratization of Media , Social Media Integration, Social Media Aggregation, The Decline of Advertising  Impact and Peer Trust all play  a role that is aided by influence mechanisms or media channels and touch points, the influence aggregators, and networks. How they all interconnected is pivotal in determining  how people behave.

For brands and companies its the  consumer trust and transparency that  remains as a  paramount concern over and above their advertising. Both managing a reputation and those consumer benefits already ingrained in a product offering become important issues.   Companies and brands that break that consumer trust  run the risk of trying to manage very hard to contain negative consumer sentiments.   Let’s not forget the adage, when a consumer has a bad experience they  tell 8- 10 people and 3-4 people when its a good experience. As we have seen in digital its amplified many times over ,  a single bad comment,  video, picture can ruin a companies or brands reputation overnight as it spreads through a web of influence.

A consumer has an 81% trust in word of mouth. The only clear and trackable way of following sentiments (other than in controlled research,or  focus groups or spying )  is to trawl the digital world where unbiased streams of thoughts and conversations take place. The same conversation can be taking place in many places at the same time , so how do we know which one has more weight than the other? which one has more influence? and which one may potentially be passed on? The landscape of Influence lies not only in immediacy of the contact or proximity to an influential source but also in  the volume of the opinion where the audience is in a dispersed chain of distribution,  or visiting sites where the collective  filtering takes place  e.g. the  most popular  opinion will rise to the top as common consensus. The social media aggregators and the resulting long tail of residual,  searchable and  referential digital footprints creates a potentially long shelf life for an opinion.

In the  Influencer landscape there are domains of influence  both in the networks where audiences gather, meet and talk  and where commentary is redistributed, in the critics circles and social media aggregators. So what are these domains?

The Where :  Domains of influence

• - Blogs, Microblogs
• - Video and photo communities
• – Message boards and forums
• – Social networks

The How : Characteristics of influencers
Its important to define our influencers  by identify certain behavioral characteristics,  as we know these people are really a minority group. A majority of people in social networks or communities are “lurkers” , the observers and readers, only a few people are the real content creators or conversationalists.  In landscape of Influence people are placed in a hierarchy of behavioral importance. Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators and the In-Actives.  There are very few Creators, more Critics, a greater number of Collectors and so on. Identifying your Creators and Critics  leads you to understand the influence they have on the greater number of  Collectors, Joiners and Spectators. Creators are the initiators of influence and they share a few basic identifiable characteristics. They :

• - Engage others in conversations
• – Inspire others to continue the conversation
• - Participate consistently
• - Are seen as credible
• - Compels others to want to hear what they say next
• - Create content that is ‘remarkable’

The What : Engaging

• - Process of Listening (Conversation maps)
• - Planning (Influencer maps)
• - Engaging (Programs)

If brands and companies want to engage in the Landscape of Influence its best to understand the lay of the landscape first. Tapping into and understanding your influencers is a growing approach and  knowing what can be influential or what motivates them as influencers is a priority .  The qualitative understanding what drives conversation and reaction  is of key importance.  Understanding the patterns of distribution  is  more of a  complex matrix, however, its is likely that on any given subject matter there is one or two main sources of primary influence and then there are many interested re distributors  who act as  networked satellites  surrounding the source in close proximity. In mapping this influence it is commonly referred to as hot spots , where a dense grouping of people , ideas and conversations are in close proximity to each other. Knowing , when and where to engage these groups requires a  business intelligence approach, involving key data points for a precision driven programs. The under pinning  of this are the relationships a brand or company will create as these are direct communications programs. Whether its blogger outreach programs, external community engagement, influencer scouring, the development of closed special interest communities there has to be a defined dialogue idea or a  value proposition in the engagement. The other thing to remember is that once you create a relationship , its ongoing and you must nurture and maintain it or lose it.

View the intiating source of the Influencers Landscape at  Ross Dawson’s Trends in Living Networks