If you’re looking for some great thought-leaders in marketing and social media check out this list below. Read their blog and the comments others make. Follow them on Twitter and attend meetups and conferences where they’ll be speaking. Many of them have terrific books available. For more details on these individuals and some others, check out the list on my personal website.

For quick and easy adding of these people to your “follow” lists, check out my Google RSS folder for Influencers and two lists from Twitter: Marketing Influencers and for a great list of many more individuals who I follow and participate with in the greater Marketing Conversation check out the marketing-conversation list.

Andrew Lark http://andylark.blogs.com/andylark/
Andy Beal http://www.marketingpilgrim.com
Andy Sernovitz  http://www.damniwish.com
Augie Ray   http://blogs.forrester.com/augie_ray
Jacob Morgan   http://www.jmorganmarketing.com
JD Lasica   http://www.socialmedia.biz
Mitch Joel  http://www.twistimage.com/
Blake Cahill   http://blog.visibletechnologies.com
Brian Solis   http://www.briansolis.com
Chris Brogan     http://www.chrisbrogan.com
David Meerman Scott    http://www.webinknow.com/
Jeremiah Owyang  http://www.web-strategist.com/blog
John Jantsch    http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog
Lee Odden     http://www.toprankblog.com
Seth Godin     http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/
Shiv Singh     http://www.goingsocialnow.com/
Tara Hunt      http://www.horsepigcow.com
Valeria Maltoni     http://www.conversationagent.com/

(Side Note: If you are a communications professional using social media or are responsible for developing a company’s strategic social media plan, I highly recommend this unconference series which occurs each Tuesday at 9:00 am Pacific Time.)

During the discussion, Ken raised several questions, and made several points, about how it’s important to understand who influences your audience and how and why they influence them. To this, I responded: It’s vital for a company to know how an Influencer’s influence manifests itself in the market conversation and engage with them appropriately to ultimately reach the Influencers’ audiences. (Of course this was stated in 140 characters.) Marc Meyer, one of my most favorite people to follow on Twitter, responded saying, “There’s a nice hidden question in there: How does influence manifest itself in market conversations?”

First, as a marketing/communications professional you want to identify the influencers in your market space. That’s another topic for another blog post, but I will say that in your research to identify the influencers you’ll essentially be viewing how their influence manifests itself! To answer Marc’s question, I’ll go ahead and use him as our Influencer—hope you don’t mind, Marc!

With Marc as our Influencer, how does Marc’s influence manifest itself in the greater marketing industry’s market conversation?

1. Twitter: @marc_meyer
2. Marc’s Blog: Direct Marketing Observations
3. Marc’s Consulting Services Company: Digital Response Marketing Group
4. SocialMediaToday.com: Contributed Articles
5. Team member: hashtagsocialmedia.com unconference
6. Marc is ranked on multiple Top-Blog lists including, Best of Alltop, Junta42 Top Blogs, AdAge Power150, PostRank
7. Marc’s Presentations: SlideShare
8. LinkedIn Profile: Connections and Group Membership
9. Marc often speaks at industry events on marketing and social media topics, is a marketing and social media consultant and is often interviewed and quoted on his knowledge of these topics. He is asked to be a guest writer on other blogs and publications and is a member/participant of social media, marketing and technology groups.

These are great to know if you’re a company who considers Marc to be an Influencer to your target audience (maybe you’re a social media monitoring company, for example). You’d want to read his blog and comment with quality information. You might want to hire him as a consultant or ask him to speak at an event. You may wish to invite him to be on a panel with your VP of Social Media. You’d certainly want to have the appropriate person follow him on Twitter and participate in his online unconference discussions.

Marc’s influence does not manifest itself in any published books (as near as I could tell) or marketing industry research reports. Other ways an individual’s influence may manifest itself is by having a highly recognizable position or they are an event host/organizer. A traditional journalist’s influence is manifested through their print column or TV segment, but may also come out through their blog.

It’s important to identify individuals who are influential in your market space and then drill down into how their influence manifests itself and how you can engage with them through those avenues to build a relationship and thus get in front of their audiences.

Thanks, Marc, for raising the question and being my test subject!

Politicians are stereo-typed as “baby-kissers” for the media cameras and back-room deal makers with individuals and companies who carry a lot of influence, but President Obama is the first presidential candidate who really took relationship building to the extreme and out into the general public. As a marketing case study, his campaign will be written in the history books as brilliant–even those who don’t agree with his political opinions can’t argue against that. So what did he do during the campaign, and now into his presidency, that epitomized what companies should be doing to build relationships?

What Does it Mean to Build Relationships? Who Do I Want to Get to? How Do I Do that?

1. Identify who the Influencers in your market space are. These are individuals and entities (organizations, conferences, groups, etc.) that most often raise new conversation topics and have their own audiences who listen and respond. Influencers can be press, bloggers, trade groups, business executives, vendors, customers, regulatory bodies, analysts and many others. By starting some simple research into what type of product/service you offer, what want/need your offering solves for people and basic brand name and competitor searching, particularly in social media outlets, will quickly show individuals or entities who appear over and over. They’ll have multiple ways in which they’re influence manifests itself (i.e. they write a popular blog, they’re a book author, they often speak at events, they hold a prestigious position, etc.)
2. Once you’ve identified the major Influencers in your space and made note of all the ways in which they’re influence manifests itself, then put your company in a position to get to know those individuals or get involved with those organizations. Consider all the ways in which you can find mutually beneficial opportunities to work together, speak on the same panel, hold joint events, etc. It could even be as simple as inviting the person for drinks after a conference to talk about your industry and discuss what opportunities you may have together. If they write a blog, read it regularly and offer constructive comments or questions–but resist the urge to advertise your company in those comments. Start referencing the Influencers by pointing other people to their articles, presentations, Twitter streams, etc. Be visible about it, too, by recommending their articles on your Twitter account or blogging a response to an article they wrote or writing a public review of their books.
3. Ultimately, your goal as a company is to build a relationship with the Influencers so that they will in turn talk about your and your company to others and so that you can get in front of their audience. Their audiences are the market conversation Participants and Listeners, which are essentially your target audience and potential customers. Participants include the Influencers, but in large are individuals who are responding to the topics raised by the Influencers. These individuals may be your customers, prospects, industry experts, competitors or anyone else with an interest in your industry. Listeners comprise the vast majority of the population—they are the individuals who look to Influencers and Participants to help them make purchase decisions and formulate their own opinions. Items 1 and 2 above are how you start to get noticed by these two groups and start to build relationships with them.
4. Keep in mind that your market conversation Participants and Listeners include your current customers, so look for ways to stay in touch with your customers beyond trying to up-sell them or get them to renew their subscription. And don’t just talk at them through email campaigns and newsletters when you have a new product or a sale. Use those mediums, as well as blogs and Twitter, etc., to give them helpful information about fulfilling their wants/needs. Don’t just sell to them and leave it at that. Provide tips and tricks, links to articles that may be of relevance to their want/need and ask for their feedback on how to improve your product. Watch for mentions by Participants and Listeners and reach out to them to thank them for their comments or to show that you care about their want/need and helping them fulfill that want/need when their mentions of your product are negative. You have a bigger opportunity to make yourself look good and gain more awareness when you properly respond to someone’s negative comments. If the person blogged that they purchased your product and it sucked, contact them or comment back offering to make amends or invite them at your expense to visit your company and be part of a focus group on improving the product. These are just some ideas, but I’m sure you’re starting to see how this works.
5. Finally, provide as many ways as possible for Influencers, Participants and Listeners to voice their thoughts and opinions back to you. A generic email address or form on your website doesn’t cut it. Have someone monitor social media and web content and respond accordingly in real-time. Give your company a human personality–give real names and email addresses of someone, anyone, so people feel like they have a person to talk to about their product issues. Follow other people on Twitter and invite your customers to follow your company–but give it as much personality as possible. If you don’t want to have a single person as the face/voice of the company, than at least have those people who are adding content be personable.

The Market Conversation: People, Locations and Tools

Came across an interesting blog post today: The Evolving Face of Social Networks. A bit more science-ish than I normally would be interested in, but as it pertains to social networking I was intrigued. The blog post raised two interesting thoughts (and I am paraphrasing): 1) If social networks are so popular/widely being adopted, why haven’t the social network companies figured out how to monetize better? and 2) The use of social networks by companies to create positive externalities for consumers and influence network members may have in choosing to pass along a stimulus created by a company that will increase purchases (or other actions) for that company.

Here’s a bit from the article that will shed some light:

Evolutionary graph theory provides a quantitative language for describing how replicators behave on networks – and may lead to new ways of quantifying the value of influence on the web.

The Gist: “Replicators” being the people who seem to get other people to join the social networks, thus growing the networks’ size. So, in the conversation marketing lingo, these are mostly the Influencers (individuals or organizations that wield enough influence in some way to attract the interest of others to join their “club” (i.e. social network).

“When a company pollutes, it is often the case that they don’t have to pay for the pollution they generate. By destroying a collective resource without paying for it, the company does us all a disservice. Economists call this a ‘negative externality.’ But companies can create ‘positive externalities,’ too, and social networking sites might be one example. They create all this wonderful collective resource, without really getting paid much to do it.”

The Gist: Hmmmm? Did the social network itself “create” the positive externality or did the Replicators/Influencers (and anyone else who adds content that people want to view onto the network) actually “create” the wonderfulness that inspires people to join in droves? If you know me, you know how I see it. The medium does not create the draw. People (people as reps for their company or organization) joining and creating groups and fan pages, etc., on these networks is what has created the “everyone join” factor. So what does that mean for the social networks and the fact that they aren’t making much money? I don’t really know. That’s up to brilliant business people to figure out. As a marketing professional, though, it’s clear that selling ad space for more companies to advertise at people within this new space of social media/networks isn’t the answer. Let’s think about that? Print newspapers and magazines, radio and TV have been struggling for a good number of years now because they can’t sell enough ad space. Why can’t they sell it? Because it doesn’t seem to give companies the return on investment (in other words, people tune out the ads so they aren’t buying stuff from those companies because of an ad, thus companies are realizing that traditional advertisements don’t work well anymore.)

What is the likelihood of people forwarding on items that they receive in a social network such as Facebook (news items, links, video clips)? What is the likelihood of people responding to messages, or re-tweeting other people’s tweets on Twitter? “The idea we need to explore is this: what is the likelihood that a particular stimulus within a social network leads to a particular response?” says Lieberman.

The Gist: Now this is what I’d like to see scientists and research experts look into further. Social networks aren’t a new concepts. Oh sure, as we know them today, to be these online locations where people can communicate and companies can build fan pages, haven’t been around long, but only the medium, the technology, is new. People have been gathering together to build relationships and exchange ideas since the beginning of time (ok, the beginning of modern man’s time.) Online social networks are simply a fantastic new way for people to “gather”. Just because they gather there, though, doesn’t mean they want advertisements in the way. The more interesting aspect mentioned here is “influence”. In the market conversations happening on and offline there are 3 groups: Influencers, Participants and Listeners. Influencers are the ones who raise topics, invite discussion, pass on information, and more. Participants comment on what Influencers do or pass along the info to others. Listeners really join in the conversation–they prefer to read the conversation and just Be.

“In my opinion, as we get better at measuring what happens within social networks, I predict a lot more organised marketing efforts on social networks as well as systematic influence campaigns.”

The Gist: The post ends with this statement. This is the real crux of what inspired me to write this post. Marketing professionals have known for years now that traditional advertising activities were not yielding the return on investment that they once did. They also know that social networks and other types of social media have made a major impact, but many can’t seem to figure out how to make use of that to benefit their companies. As the science of measuring what happens on social networks and what drives human nature to share information with others within the social networks companies will have a better idea of how to participate in their market conversations.

In the business world, it seems to me that “sponsored” conversations are just as unreal.

Recently, one of my favorite marketing industry influencers, Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan) wrote a post titled As Marketing Shifts Back to the Everyman. I regularly read Chris’ blog, so I would have read this anyway… but when I saw the titled in my RSS feed I thought it might be about some type of shift in how companies are becoming more moral in their marketing. Having gotten a BA in Theater before my master’s in marketing, when I read Everyman in the title, I assumed it was a reference to the 15th century morality play of the same name.

Uh, I was wrong, but the post wasn’t too far off talking about morality in marketing. Well, maybe not “morality,” exactly, but morality as defined in one dictionary.com meaning: The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct. Chris’ post covered his thoughts on marketing’s shift from impersonal interactions in favor of more personal communication.

“Marketing is shifting away from impersonal interactions and back towards the more effective world of word of mouth. Blended with the world of word-of-mouth, however (or maybe more accurately, I should say that word of mouth is only one tool in the bag), are sponsored conversations. Ted Murphy just recorded a video about these recently. The only difference is that in one, things happen a bit more organically. In the other, there’s a bit of a push (which usually involves money or a product or a service changing hands).

To me, they’re like a driver and a putter (not that I play golf). Getting people to pay attention in this saturated market is requiring more and more creative marketing. I, for one, see that to be content marketing. But once you get onto the green (or in the financial sense, the case to earn some green), I think word of mouth is the more finesse-level tool. Make sense”

Chris’ post started out by explaining that he is sent a lot of products to try out because companies recognize that he’s an influential online persona who is highly likely to blog about a product he likes and his audience reach is vast so a company can be sure many people will see a post written by Chris and some people will even pass it on to others.

I suppose Chris was making the connection between products he tries out and blogs about and “sponsored” conversations because he sees the act of a company sending him the products to try as “sponsoring” the conversation about that product. One of the reasons I trust Chris as an influencer is because I know he believes in transparency. He would never endorse anything that he personaly has a stake in without being totally explicit on his involvement with that company/product/person, etc.

I disagree that this is “sponsored” conversation in the market place. I think it’s just a good tactic for a company to do. It’s actually very risky, far more risky than other marketing sponsorships may be. If the influencer doesn’t like the product, they could easily blog about that. Also, in the case of someone like Chris, the readership will know that Chris isn’t randomly sharing his thoughts on a product just because. Here’s where the reality TV connection comes in. The fact that Chris was sent the product by the company changes the reality of how he might think about it and/or whether he’d actually share that info with anyone.

If Chris went through a purchase process of his own to find a product to fulfill a want or need and then he recommended that product on his blog, that would be an organic conversation moment. But perhaps he doesn’t really need a new product to fulfill a want or need, but a company chooses to send him something to try out. If he likes it, great, but would he have ever even looked for it if they hadn’t sent it to him? Would he be as inspired to write about his enthusiasm for the product if he had gone through a painstaking purchase process? The product may be awesome, but what if the buying experience sucked? He wouldn’t know because reality of needing/wanting something, finding out what best fulfills that want/need, and going through a purchase process is altered for him.

Just food for thought.

I just watched the movie Fight Club (again) and it inspired me to adapt Tyler Durden’s ‘8 Rules of Fight Club’ and create the ‘8 Rules of Conversation Marketing’. If you haven’t seen the movie or read the book, I highly recommend you do. So here we go…  

#1 The first rule of Fight Club is, you do not talk about Fight Club.

#1 – The first rule of Conversation Marketing, is you do not market AT people.

Forget what you learned in Marketing 101.

Times have changed. People are no longer sitting back and having their wants and needs dictated to them. They are now speaking up and telling you. Listen to them.

Believe it or not, there are people out there that have a better understanding than you of how to improve your product/business/service, and also very willing to share it with you. Learn from them.

Your customers are also now closer to you than ever before. This creates an incredible opportunity to establish trust and create relationships with them. Be authentic in your communication. Fewer scripted emails. Quicker response times. Ask them questions. Share with them your process. Interact with them.

Conversation marketing practices provide for a two-way dialogue, where traditional marketing practices are one-directional, only sending information out. When a company opens itself up to having a two-way conversation—listening, speaking and sharing—with all audience members—Influencers, Participants and Listeners—the benefits are beyond what traditional approaches can provide.

#2 The second rule of Fight Club is, you DO NOT talk about Fight Club.

#2 – The second rule of Conversation Marketing, is you DO NOT market AT people.

This bears repeating. You must participate in the conversation with content that enhances the Influencers’ conversation topics, motivates Participants, and addresses the Listeners’ needs. If you just simply blast out your marketing messages via social media tools, you will be viewed as a SMAMer (Social Media Spammer) – losing the attention and loyalty of your audience. Be sure to interact with, not market at your audience.

#3 – If someone says stop, goes limp, taps out, the fight is over.

#3 – If someone says something, pay attention.

Here’s a great quote I came across:

“In the old days, brands wanted everybody to pay attention to them. Now, brands need to pay attention to everyone else.” – Anonymous

Listen to what is being said before joining the conversation. Find out what people are talking about, what they like/dislike and what’s being said about your company, your competitors and the overall industry. Learn from what you gather and participate in a way that addresses the current market conversation.

Be sure to also identify who are the ‘influencers’ behind those conversations. Understand where they converse (blog, twitter, conferences, etc.) and what their views are. At a point where you can actually add value to the conversation, participate.

#4 – Two guys to a fight.

#4 – Two or more people are needed to have a conversation.

Conversation Marketing is not one-directional. It’s about the dialogue. Many companies take the first step of posting, sharing, uploading, tweeting, etc. – but jump to the next initiative without paying attention to the conversations that emerge. If you ‘say something’ – be committed to listening and responding to others.

#5 – One fight at a time.

#5 – Participate where it makes sense, not just because it’s available.

Being everywhere can be dangerous as it can spread your resources thin. Remember, it’s about quality versus quantity. Sometimes it will make sense to get involved, other times it won’t. Have a clear understanding of why you would participate and the resources needed to do so. Have a strategy.

#6 – No shirts, no shoes.

#6 – Be transparent, be authentic.

Don’t be afraid to share your experiences—positive and negative—and your insights as you grow your company and evolve your product lines. It’s also OK to make mistakes as long as you explain/apologize/learn from them and communicate that. People appreciate transparency and authenticity. This type of interaction will add a personal touch to your brand that is greatly lost through mass-marketing.

#7 – Fights will go on as long as they have to.

#7 – Conversations will go on as long as they have to – monitor them.

Just because you’ve moved on to other things, doesn’t mean people have. Use monitoring tools to keep up-to-date on new developments of old topics/conversations you’ve had, as well as current topics. There are plenty of free and paid tools to help you monitor the conversations that take place.

#8 – If this is your first night at Fight Club, you have to fight.

#8 – If you join the conversation, you must be committed to follow through.

Even if you don’t choose to get involved, the conversations about your product/service/industry will go on with or without you. Pretending they don’t is dangerous.

Just as bad is initially getting involved, but not following through. I’ve seen plenty of companies jump onto the hot new trend (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), but after some time, fail to be active (or even reactive). To the audience, it’s as though you’ve set up a store, with the front door open, but no one is working inside.

This is why it is essential to have a strategy. Social media is not a strategy; social media are tools and locations where communication takes place and where you can interact with your audience. Social media should also not be looked at like a campaign.

Conversation Marketing identifies the people behind the market conversation, locations where they interact (online and offline), and how businesses can become qualified participants and influencers in that conversation. Creating a conversation marketing strategy is a holistic way to align your marketing efforts and be sure they support your business goals.

As Tyler once said, “Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on.”  So listen to them, learn from them, and get to know them. Otherwise, you may get knocked out… 

1) Conversation Marketing is Comprehensive, Social Media Marketing is Not

If you’re new to the blog you’re probably wondering why the quotes appear around “social media marketing.” It’s because we (my partners and I at Idiom Strategies and more marketing thought leaders every day) consider social media technologies/sites/outlets to be tools and/or conversation locations. Noise is noise no matter where you have it. The main goal of conversation marketing is to stop creating noise and start interacting in the market conversation with quality content. Here’s a BtoB Magazine article with some great advice for Conversation Marketing (not just social media as the article title suggests): 5 tips for b-to-b social media marketing.

2) Not Every Company Needs Every Conversation Tool or Location

Just because it is there does not mean your company needs to do it. Another BtoB Magazine article that caught my attention is B-to-B followers flock to Twitter. This article is one of the better pieces I’ve seen about using social media tools/locations, and it’s helpful whether your are BtoB or BtoC. The article mentions how some companies are using the social media tool Twitter to converse with current customers AND watch what is being said about them in the market conversation (or at least in the Twitter feeds.)

“Twitter is just another tool we have in our marketing toolbox to create another way for us to communicate with our customers,” said Scott Townsend, United Linen’s marketing director. “I am careful to use the word “with’ because social media is fantastic for giving us the opportunity to not only send information but, more important, receive information from our customers and employees.”
“Businesses need to be careful when using social media outlets such as Twitter because they tend to want to start selling stuff now,” Townsend said.
“But Twitter is more about creating and furthering a relationship with a customer, becoming a resource to them and showing yourself [to be] available to provide solutions.”

This guy get’s it. Interacting with the market conversation means actually having a conversation with them that is mutually beneficial. Don’t market AT people, talk with them and they’ll be far more likely to listen to you and be interested in what you offer.

The thing this article is missing is that companies should look beyond just searching Twitter and the entire Internet for mentions of their company or products. If you define your market conversation space well enough, you’ll be able to extract conversation content that can be used as vendor-neutral proof points for your sales team to use. Also, your R&D department can get a big boost by understanding what is at the heart of the market conversation ecosystems needs and wants–valuable insight into further product developments.

3) Identifying the Right Influencers to Interact with is Key

The idea of targeting certain demographics groups was revolutionary in it’s time and with it came the flood of ways to identify your perfect audience and serve them your marketing bullet points. But with so much noise out there, even if you hit a location that attracts your perfect audience, they’re ignoring your marketing fluff. As technologies move forward and people weed through the noise, the better approach is to identify the Influencers who are driving your market conversation. In the article Making Social Networks Pay Part 1, writer Ned Madden discusses the challenges of social media networks and tools developing “sustainable and scalable business model that can satisfactorily monetize the vast ecosystem of the social networks.”

Madden mentions profile data extraction and mapping services, brand monitoring and network analysis tools and marketing automation options. Companies offering these things are popping up like mad, right now, and many of them are really terrific for gathering info, but simple demographics don’t work anymore. People don’t care about products, they care about their wants and needs–that is what they want addressed regardless of where they go to listen to the market conversation. So the prudent thing is for companies to spend the effort to Identify the Influencers who are driving the market conversation around fulfilling ecosystems wants and needs. Interact with those individuals in the conversation locations they use and build a relationship with them through the conversation tools they choose to use. By doing this, companies will be seen by the other conversation Participants and the vast number of Listeners who look to those influencers for purchase advice.

The term Blogosphere has become so prevalent that no one questions what it is. It isn’t a place or even just a website. It is a collection of online “conversation locations.” Blogs are written by single individuals or by a collective of individuals writing in the same “location” around a central topic. The terms “blogosphere,” “blog,” and “bloggers” have become so normalized in our Internet lexicon that no one seems to be thinking twice about it. And in the marketing/PR world we are getting awfully loose with throwing around terms like “blogger relations” and “blogger outreach.” (ok, too many quote marks–I’m feeling dizzy!)

But consider this… Is there really such an audience as bloggers? Or, are their individuals with particular backgrounds and expertise who are deemed influential and one of the ways their influence manifests itself is through a blog they happen to write?

Sorry if this throws a monkey wrench in anyone’s thinking, but I believe the later. I believe there are certain people that have a drive to share their views and opinions and some of those people have knowledge, experience or insight that prompt others to pay attention. Think of the influential individuals who have always been around the business world. Remember EF Hutton? When he talked, people listened (or at least their commercial said so.) Before the blogosphere showed up, people still listed to influential people–it just took more effort and it wasn’t as easy to join the conversation. Then, influencers shared their thoughts by writing contributed articles or whitepapers. Many of them would speak at industry conferences or give speeches at other venues. Commonly, influencers were the analysts and press who had audiences waiting for the info. Blog and other online technology has simply given more people the opportunity to make their voice heard.

So, I maintain that there have always been influencers and they’ve always been talking and people have been listening for much longer than the blogosphere has been around. The technology did not make these people influential, it simply gave them another means by which to share info.

Thus… someone is influential, therefore they might also be bloggers.