About the pillars of Influence online !!!

Yesterday, an article from David Armano in the Harvard Business Review about the pillars of online influence grabbed my attention. As usual, Armano has a good vision and takes six serious factors into account to define online influence. For him, there are six pillars which are essentials to handle if you want to evaluate the influence of somebody on Internet. Let's have a look at these pillars pointed out by Armano.  

The Reach : 

It is an essential and crucial factor for influence. The reach is an enlarged vision of your audience because it takes into account your audience and the audience of your audience. Indeed, when you send some information to your followers, it happens that they spread it to their own audience. This reach is hard to calculate because there are many ways to define it precisely. Indeed, you can simply add your audience and the audience of your audience (pretty easy on twitter but not on blogs) but you can also try to mix it with an amplification ratio (as it is calculate by Klout for example). 

The Proximity : 

It is pretty simple to understand. You will be more likely to act upon a proximate person's recommendation. The more you know a person, the more you're able to trust him. This factor doesn't only work in real life. Online, it is the same but in a different way because you can develop proximity with somebody you don't know IRL just by being a frequent reader of this person. Nevertheless, it means that people are more likely to trust people they follow for a long time because they are this way able to know him better. 

The Expertise : 

Once again, it is something which is pretty simple to understand. You're more likely to influence people on topics you're expert in. Let's just take an example to illustrate this idea. Will you trust Lady Gaga if she talk about politics ? Maybe but surely not ^^ If she talks about fashion or music, you will be more likely to trust her. Everybody has some expertise and their influence is stronger in these fields of expertise. So this must be take into account while evaluating someone's influence.

The Relevancy : 

For me, relevancy is similar to expertise... And once again, i will ask you a simple question : Will you trust Lady Gaga is she gives you her opinion on financial crisis ? Is she relevant on this topic ? I'm not so sure. Some others are more relevant to this topic like Ben Bernanke for example ^^ Anyway, if you mix relevancy with reach, you can have some surprises because sometimes a non-expert could have some great ideas that could spread around the world. Recently in France, Eric Cantona, a former professionnal footbal player, expressed some ideas about the way people must behave with bankers and his ideas have had great impact towards french people. 

The Credibility :

To continue with this Eric Cantona' example, if his ideas have had a huge success in France this is because he has developed a huge credibility in the past years and french people are knowing him and sometimes they are trusting him because they know that Eric Cantona has always expressed his ideas straightly. So, we can now admit that somebody could be influential if he is credible, which takes a long time. This way, we must recognize that influence is something which must be constructed on a long-term perspective.

The Trust : 

Logically, Trust is another pillar of influence. And it seems to me that I don't have to explain this point more because you cannot be influenced by someone you don't trust.  

Personally, I do agree with armano's vision but I want to add some important others pillars to this theory. Indeed, Armano is pointing out some very essentials factors that could help to understand influence. The problem with his pillars is that they're not measurable. And this way, they're useless if you want to rank people by level of influence (NDL : except the reach that could be calculated precisely). Now, everybody agree that influence is something we can't do without if you try to understand what's really happening on internet, especially if you want to understand how ideas are circulating. 

Amplification : As I pointed out while explaining the Reach, you must consider to calculate an amplification ratio. What does it mean ? Amplification is the likeliness your content will be spread and amplified by others. This could be simply calculated especially with RT, Mentions, Backlinks, etc... 

Engagement : 

Engagement is something which is, in my opinion, crucial to understand people's influence. The influence of somebody is defined by the way people from his audience will react to his content. If you engage with your audience frequently, your followers will be more likely to trust you because they have the feeling that you're HUMAN ^^ Moreover, if you engage frequently with your audience, your followers will have the feeling to be considered. This way, they will be more likely to spread your content if it is related to their concerns. This must also be simply calculated.

Frequency of Speaking

In an era of infobesity, if you don't speak, you don't exist. If you stop speaking, you will be forgotten. So if you speak frequently without being considered as a spammer, you will gain trust form your followers and your audience. This way, you will really be a living part of their network !!! To be influential, it is important to speak as often as it is necessary. This is pretty obvious to monitor ^^

Style : 

Last but not least, I want to point another pillar which is not measurable : The style ! As you all know, we are all confronted to the same infomations and many people are discussing about the same topics. Some see their content spreading an spreading and some others see their contents disapearing within a few hours. In this context, we must admit that the style is important to your followers and to your audience because it is one of the thing that will make a difference between one person from another. 

To conclude, we must admit that we need some indicators like Klout or PeerIndex, even if they're not perfect to understand this influence concept seriously. On the one hand, we have some obvious indicators like those pointed out recently by the MIT and on the other hand, we have some others indicators which are much more difficult to measure but also very important.