Online influence is a hot topic these days. Take, for instance,  Fast Company’s Influencer Project or Brian Solis’s recent blog post, “What Makes an Influencer?” Not only has there been a lot more talk about influence, but there is visible exploration of figuring out what it really means to be an influencer.

Anyone in the social media space is well aware of the backlash that came after only a few hours of the Influencer Project going live. Most of the arguments surrounded the idea that influence, as far as this campaign was concerned, was really a vote of popularity. While I do have to give props to Fast Company for implementing such a brilliant marketing campaign (if you didn’t know who they were, you probably do now), it is nice to know that the general public does recognize a popularity contest over the definition of true influence.

So, back to the question, “WHAT is influence and WHO defines that role?” Well, there is probably not one decisive answer – afterall, influence is very dynamic – but our constant work with influencers from the web has provided us with some insight.

Jason Falls pretty much hits it dead on in his blog post, “Look for Trust, It’s About Trust.” Influence is mainly about two things – context and trust. An influencer is a person (not a corporate blog or publication ) who interacts with and maintains trust among his community and, eventually, gains the ability to influence change within their community. These things happen by becoming a sort of expert in the context they write or talk about. In a certain context, Pete Cashmore or Ashton Kutcher could be considered influential, but in another context, Brett McKay or John Sumser may be more influential. It is all based on what type of person you are looking for and the type of people you are trying to reach. Within their communities, any one of these people are extremely influential whether they have millions of Twitter followers or thousands.

So what do you think? What makes someone a true influencer?

Tags: fast company, inflluencer, Influencer Project

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 1st, 2010 at 9:04 am and is filed under Influencer Discovery, This We Believe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.