TRAACKR

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?

Oxytocin, aka the Trust Hormone, has been at the center of several recent studies showing the correlation between the release of oxytocin by the body and social bonding. These studies conclude that the presence of oxytocin increases trust, essential to building social bonds. In other words, our body is wired to know when to release oxytocin based on cues we get from our social context to let us know when someone is to be trusted.

The idea that we learn through our upbringing, culture, and personal experience who can and can not be trusted, and in what context is quite obvious. However, the fact that our brain triggers a physical reaction (release of the hormone) is very interesting. This finding is even more fascinating in the context of the work we do at Traackr: identifying the triggers of online influence (def. the ability to affect another person’s actions through an online relationship).

Through the analysis of the massive amount of data we have been collecting and client case studies, we have come to the conclusion that online influence (not to be confused with online popularity) is highly correlated to online trust. Our theory is that by contributing actively within a certain context (whether topical, social, geographical), people are more likely to build trust among their peers, audience, etc., and as a result to influence their actions.

Of course, much work is left to be done to prove this theory but it seems that the research done on the impact of oxytocin is a very important piece of the puzzle, especially when we look a few years ahead. Let me explain: for my generation (Gen X) and older, triggers for the trust hormone will primarily be found in the physical world; for Millennials though, born and raised within a digital world, these triggers can be activated on and offline. This explains the generation gap we sometimes feel when it comes to the role and importance of social media. Take for example this interview of Malcolm Gladwell in the Globe & Mail, in which the acclaimed author observes:

If social media or online communication is the means to the creation of a personal connection, it’s a fabulous thing. But if it’s an excuse to not make a connection, it’s ultimately a trivial thing.

It doesn’t even cross Malcolm Gladwell’s mind that rather than online communication being a vehicle to create relationships offline, relationships can also be shaped, strengthened, expanded, and enhanced online. Now we know why: he, along with most people of his generation, is not wired to build online trust, let alone relationships.

As Millennials increase their share of the economy and decision power, the importance of building trustworthy social bonds online will become paramount, making online influence and online trust a core part of our social and economic fabric. These are not some futuristic views on our world. This is already happening today and our mission at Traackr is to help surface the data and ease the transition.

The hype around Social Media ROI measurement has finally gotten to me: I’m growing tired of 140 characters promises, conference invitations, or free trials to the latest tool solving social media ROI measurement and help brands get on the social media bandwagon.

The promise of a silver bullet to approach this really complex issue is slowing down the development and adoption of social media by businesses, not accelerating it.

So let me call it as it is: measuring the ROI of social media can’t be done. I’m actually quoting here the father of ROI measurement, Bob Kaplan (ref. #SMB10), inventor of the balanced scorecard.

Trying to calculate the ROI of social media is the same as trying to calculate the ROI of email or the road you drive to work on. The costs can be approximated but the benefits can’t. Their reach is too broad and too many other factors are at play to even to list them all, let alone attempt to measure profits.

Maybe even more importantly than one’s inability to measure ROI for social media, the main problem of this ROI hype is that it fuels the idea that social media for businesses is an end in itself and can have its own P&L. It’s not, it’s a capability (or rather a very broad set of capabilities) that serves other business objectives and of course one should measure success associated to these business objectives.

I can’t tell you the number of clients of Traackr who asked me whether they should be on Facebook or Twitter. My answer is invariably the same: what are you trying to achieve?

There is no ROI associated to social media. There is an ROI associated to business objectives and social media can help achieve some (many?) of them.

The decision whether to invest in social media doesn’t lie in an excel spreadsheet, rather it’s a leap of faith and a belief by some business leaders that they are better off with it than without it. The tipping point for companies is based on risk tolerance, peer pressure and critical mass, not on a dubious ROI calculation.

Our team has been so busy lately that we needed a good motivation to spend the time articulating our thinking on the theoretical framework behind Traackr.

We found this reason to step back from the day-to-day craziness and think about our work after being invited to speak at Pecha Kucha 11 in Boston.

I personnally love Pecha Kucha in all its aspects: 1- the format of the presentations is extremely constraining (20 slides 20s per slide) and forces presenters to be very articulate and clear on the ideas they want to communicate. 2- the brief is “no business pitch” which brings a tremendous variety in the interventions and forces businesses to think about the value of what they do to the community.

Tonight’s talk will be the first brick of many to come for Traackr to articulate its theoretical framework and how we see ourselves: Traackr is an agent of a marketing revolution leading to the emergence of collaborative marketing.

What the hell am I talking about? Come to Mantra tonight to attend Pecha Kucha  and you’ll know!

This blog post from Tech Crunch poses a very interesting potential business model for Twitter.  I didn’t realize it, but now new Twitter users are given suggestions for 100 people they should be following.  As you can imagine, the names on that Suggested 100 list stand to generate an ENORMOUS amount of followers, very quickly.  Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis has offered Twitter $250K to be on that list for 2 yrs.  So may think he’s crazy…I think he’d be getting a steal at this price.  It would cost $250K for a 30-second spot during a just ok primetime tv show.  How many eyeballs would that get you (with the DVR factor)?  Vs how many eyeballs and impressions being on this Twitter list will generate in 2 years.  Don’t have time to do the math right now, but will later and come up with an answer for this…

Very interesting.  Is Twitter a powerful media platform?  You bet it is…

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/12/how-much-is-a-suggested-slot-on-twitter-worth-jason-calacanis-offers-250000/

DS

Since yesterday’s announcements from Google and Facebook (a couple of hours apart) that they would both make their social ID standard available to all sites, the (micro)blogosphere has been quite active to look at the merits of each solution and try to predict who will emerge victorious.

Social data standards are paramount to TRAACKR and we’d like to chim in with our own point of view on the suject. So, Facebook or Google? WHO CARES??!?

No, seriously, who, outside of Facebook and Google, cares? We should just all be happy that this arm wrestling between the 2 giants is taking place because it means that standards are indeed converging, which is really all that matters.

Why should there even be 1 single standard? We tend to forget that the “winner takes all” approach to Web businesses doesn’t always hold true, far from it.

If OpenID and Facebook Connect are both adopted widely, it won’t be long before some small genius businesses (like yours truly) start building bridges between the major standards to unify them. I’d just be content  if we’re left dealing with only 2!

We only wish for this battle for standards to expand in scope and start including more social data types than basic social network info. It’s undoubtely the way it is going and the fact that both Google and Facebook are leading the charge will only accelerate this trend.

So our opinion on this? Keep on the good fight!

This morning, I attended Boston’s Social Media Breakfast 10 where Brian from Hubspot, Matt from Visible Measures and Andy from HBS each presented their point of view on ways to measure the ROI of social media.

Aside from the framing of the issue that unnecessarily restricted the definition of social media (how is blogging not social media?!?), the talks were quite interesting.

The highlight of the session (that may well have corresponded with caffeine finally kicking in) was a quote by Bob Kaplan relayed by Andy McAfee who was answering a question about measuring the ROI of technology and the answer of the Accounting Hall-of-famer (yes there is such a thing) was simply: “you can’t do it.”

His point of view is quite straight-forward really: one can’t apply reliable ROI calculations to very complex and ill-defined environments. This of course applies to Social Media as well and is a lesson for us all: don’t overreach.

Does it mean that we should give up on measurements, and that Visible Measures, or Traackr for that matter, shouldn’t be in business? Quite the opposite.

Andy made it clear in his talk that the cost side of ROI ought to always be tracked diligently.

I would add that the opportunity side (aka revenue), though largely qualitative at the beginning needs to be followed with equal, if not greater, attention. There are two reasons for this: first, by tracking performance over time, you will get reliable trending information very quickly, second, by observing a variety of performance metrics you will end up being able to close the loop and calculate an ROI.

As an example, Traackr has started following the impact that Amazon reviewers have on the sales rank of the products they write reviews on. We can discern clear performance patterns and build reliable ROI calculations around this because we operate in a controlled environment (here Amazon) and have a set of historical data to work from – and btw these Amazon reviews also belong in social media.

The issue that Andy McAfee and Bob Kaplan are highlighting is that this data is not available beforehand thus can’t drive an investment decision and that it will ultimately take the leap of faith of a business leader to make it.

If you’re the one doing the convincing, remind your boss that they most likely have their job today because someone made such a decision before. The fact that your company is in existence is all the proof you need.

Last night, I had the chance to briefly meet Tim O’Reilly at Ignite 4 Boston (thanks Sara!). Better yet: I had the opportunity to talk to him about Traackr!

So I went on to explain that Traackr is about finding and qualifying social influencers in online communities, helping them become aware of their role and influence, and, when relevant, connecting them with marketers (I guess it you’re reading this post I probably didn’t need to tell you all this, right?). Tim’s reaction was to say “you had me until you mentioned marketers”. I tried to qualify what I meant but my window of attention was closing, darn!

I have grown increasingly frustrated since last night about this interaction. Not at all at Tim O’Reilly but at the fact that “marketing” or “marketer” has become a quasi curse word in social media lingo, and in many ways, rightly so due to decades of mass media.

So now is the time to reclaim the term ‘marketing’ for what it is intended to be (and in some ways is): an open channel between a brand and its customers.

For too long brands have had the “luxury” of mass communication, primarily consisting in pouring TV dollars in marketing campaigns. Exxon Mobile has an image issue? Let’s do a large TV campaign on how they works hard at solving all the world’s greatest problems.

The theory behind this approach is that perception trumps reality and you can muscle your way to controlling perception (much cheaper than actually changing reality). There is nothing new here and Exxon has perfected this craft over and over again.

So if *this* is marketing, no wonder that the perception by most is that marketers are there to get you, crafting messages to shape perceptions, deliberately manipulate cognitions and direct behaviors.

Here is the glitch: the definition I just gave is the one for propaganda, not marketing; propaganda never made the list of the famous 4 Ps defining marketing.

No question that some (many) marketers still behave like propagandists. So let’s just call them for what they are instead of polluting marketing.

The good news is that they are an endangered species as the propaganda machine only functions when the leaks are limited, meaning when the audience targeted has limited access to other sources of information and opinions. With mass media is taking a plunge, the one-sided perception of brands is weakening; meanwhile new social media are offering the general public amazing opportunities to voice their opinion, seek the one of peers, unmistakably leading to the end of the era of propaganda. I don’t mean that there won’t be (or isn’t for that matter) propaganda in new media but rather that the openness of the system makes it impossible to succeed.

I understand Tim’s concern when we talk at Traackr about connecting social influencers (i.e. the most influential voices in communities) to marketers, envisioning these community leaders becoming themselves propaganda agents. This is not this type of relationship we’re anticipating.

Traackr’s perspective is that there is a fundamental and symbiotic relationship between social influencers and marketers that is in the making and will accelerate the downfall of propagandists.

What form could this collaboration take? We don’t believe that it is or will be one-size-fits-all. Depending on the role played by a social influencer, their community, and the brand a marketer represents, the collaboration could take very different forms (from simple information sharing to product endorsement).

A good example of how this is already happening may be the way the Obama campaign collaborated with social media moguls to call out the misrepresentation of the facts by the McCain campaign of Obama’s comment on “putting lipstick on a pig”, falsly presented as describing Sarah Palin. All the Obama team had to do to stop the propaganda machine was to make available the full clip of his speech and let social influencers communicate on their own terms.

A more symbiotic collaboration as described above between influencers and marketers has the potential to lead brands into the social media revolution by forcing them to pay more attention to their audiences and not only on how to sell to them but more importantly how to be relevant. Social influencers in turn can provide better insights for the community they represent and further their role by impacting decisions on products and services by brands.

Now I need to find a way to summarize all this in a couple of sentences for the next time I meet Tim

Hank Williams in his blog, “why does everything suck?“, wrote today about being in Blogger jail, and his desire as a blogger to disassociate the platform from the content (whether articles or comments).

A heated discussion started a couple of weeks ago on social data portability – we wrote a bunch of things at the time following the news – you can find the posts in this blog.

Hank’s plea for a more open environment for bloggers where information could flow is no different from the discussions on social data and their portability. Both advocate for an environment where platforms and data are kept separate.

This is of course a scary idea for most businesses out there trying to create an “unfair competitive advantage” (I hate this idea btw) by raising the threshold of switching services – not so different from your cell phone provider trying to make your life difficult to switch service. I’m not going to go too far down that path as this is a whole other article I’ll probably post on the Ignesis blog.

We wrote a few weeks back a post called “Who owns my data? What really matters is who controls it!” advocating that users should be on the forefront of (re)claiming their data and push for open standards. We are on the right track with so many services starting to emerge using RSS feeds and APIs to aggregate user data to provide stats to the user, like TubeMogul, assess performance, like Traackr, or simply enable central upload of content, like Oosha.

The loop is not fully closed yet but the trend is getting enough momentum to become hard to stop.