Influence in the age of the social web

Influence in the age of the social Web1

Philip Sheldrake2MeanwhileBlog LinkedInTwitterCIPR TV___________EUPRERA, Lisbon, 4th March 2011www.andmeanwhile.comwww.philipsheldrake.com/in/philipsheldrake@sheldrakewww.cipr.tv___________#euprera #ess11

Communications complexity and My ChannelA clean sheet / Influence and other definitionsThe Six Influence FlowsContrast to traditional emphases; the 2nd flow debateThe social Web and beyondThe Balanced Scorecard – business performance management and ROIThe Influence Scorecard – influence performance management and ROIInfluence-centricity – influencer-centricity is flawedComing up…4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales3

This presentation is based on the The Business of Influence – Reframing Marketing and PR for the Digital Age, Philip Sheldrake, Wiley, April 2011.Book4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales4

What exactly are we dealing with here?Let’s paint the picture for the content / media side of things…Communications complexity and My Channel4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales5

Content – an illustrated history4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and WalesBlog post: http://www.philipsheldrake.com/2011/01/content-an-illustrated-historyHi-res long-form image: http://bit.ly/content-an-illustrated-historySlideshare version: http://bit.ly/hPYjnd6

It’s impossible to fake it.Real-time social marketing and PR must, by nature, be authentic.Real-time PR marks the death of the persuasion / ‘spin’ school.Long live two-way, symmetric PR fostering mutually beneficial relationships between an organisation and its publics.Reality is perception4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales22Real-time PR is one of those facets of the modern PR discipline that separates the 21st Century PR professional from the 20th Century practitioner.

A clean sheet / influence and other definitions234th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales

Rethinks are best started by jettisoning baggage.Some words and phrases come with the ‘baggage’ of historic and current use and misuse and are likely therefore to confuse or narrow our thinking.Words like “advertising”, “publicity”, “promotion”, “marketing”, “comms” and “public relations”.My book is a rethink4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales24

Organisation– an organized group of people with a particular purposeStakeholder – a person or organisation with an interest or concern in our organisation or something our organisation is involved inCompetitor – an organisation with objectives that clash with our own either directly (eg, fly with us not them) or indirectly (eg, don’t fly, video conference instead).I adopt the common distinction between competitors and stakeholders.The entities4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales25

Customer – pays with money or attention; includes “consumer”Prospect – a potential customerClient – under our carePartner – eg, supplier, reseller, retailerCitizen – a legally recognisedsubject or national Employee – includes dependents, and dependent retireesShareholder – owner of shares or similar interestThe stakeholders4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales26

– to have an effect on the character, development, or behaviour of someone or something.You have been influenced when you think in a way you would not otherwise have thought or do something you would not otherwise have done.I always use influence to mean influencing and being influenced.Influence4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales27

The Six Influence Flows4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales28

Relevance – closely connected or appropriate to the matter in handResonance – the power to evoke enduring images, memories, and emotionsAccessible – easily understood or appreciated; friendly and approachableReputation – beliefs or opinions generally held about someone or somethingTrust – firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or somethingSignificance – the quality of being worthy of attention; importance.Definitions in this influence framework4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales29

The task at hand is influence. The resulting perception in the near-term may be described in terms of relevance, resonance and accessibility. The outcomes in the longer-term are reputation, trust and significance. The task at hand4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales30

The 2nd Flow Debate314th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales

It’s probably too simplistic but not too wide of the mark to consider the historic focus of marketing and PR practice as being predominantly on the 1st influence flow (our influence with our stakeholders),…with a bit of the 3rd (stakeholders influence with us), eg, internal circulation of news clippings; marketing research to improve one’s understanding of consumer preferences, attitudes, and behaviours; and best practice PR; so long as you systematically make sure these have an influence of course. Contrast to traditional emphases4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales32

The 2nd flow is stakeholders influence with each other with respect to us.James Grunigcontinues to support the validity of the two-way symmetrical model in the digital age.In Paradigms of Global Public Relations in the Age of Digitalisation, he specifically responds to Brian Solis and Deirdre Breakenridge, and David Phillips and Philip Young.The 2nd flow debate4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales33

“The Web has changed everything”Putting the Public back in Public Relations: How Social Media is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR.“... it is hard to avoid making the claim that ‘the internet changes everything.’ ... for public relations the unavoidable conclusion is that nothing will ever be the same again”Online Public Relations: A Practical Guide to Developing an Online Strategy in the World of Social Media.The assertions4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales34

“The bold claim that emerges from the arguments put forward for ‘the new PR’ is that the fundamental vector of communication that shapes reputation and an organization’s relationship with its stakeholders has flipped through 90 degrees. Now, the truly significant discourse is that which surrounds an organisation, product or service, a conversation that is enabled and given form and substance by the interlinked, aggregated messages that emerge from internet mediated social networks.”Phillips and Young4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales35

“In one sense, I agree with these assertions. For most practitioners, digital media do change everything about the way they practice public relations. Other practitioners, however, doggedly use the new media in the same way that they used traditional media. From a theoretical perspective, in addition, I do not believe digital media change the public relations theory…Rather, the new media facilitate the application of the principles and, in the future, will make it difficult for practitioners around the world not to use the principles.”Grunig’s response4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales36

“I do not believe that the ‘internet society’ or the ‘new PR’ challenges the Excellence paradigm, as Phillips and Young argued…They seem to believe that ‘an organisation and its publics’ are distinct from ‘internet-mediated social networks’. Instead, I believe that an organisation and its publics now are embedded in internet-mediated social networks but that public relations is still about an organisation’s relationships with its publics.”Grunig’s response /24th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales37

“Organisations do not need relationships with individuals who are not members of their publics even though these people might be actively communicating with and building relationships with each other.Organisations simply do not have the time or resources to cultivate relationships with everyone – only with individuals or groups who have stakes in organisations because of consequences that publics or organisations have or might have on each other.”Grunig’s response /34th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales38

– isn’t just a new media form in my opinion.It has unprecedented emergent behaviour, a scientific term used to describe how very many relatively simple interactions (eg, blogging, tweeting, sharing) can give rise to complex systems, systems that exhibit one or more properties as a whole that aren’t manifest for smaller parts or individual components.“Internet mediated” communication4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales39

What are these “relationships” that Grunig refers to?Relationship – the way in which two or more people or things are connected, or the state of being connected.But with our blank sheet approach we’ve freed ourselves from such constructs. All we have are Six Influence Flows that may or may not be based on “relationships” with “publics”.Relationships4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales40

So instead of saying that “organisations do not need relationships with individuals who are not members of their publics” we can say that organisations will find it advantageous to maintain awareness of all Six Influence Flows regardless of the genesis or properties of the influence that flows therein.Organisations can prepare for the expected and unexpected emergence of influences that might warrant attention.Monitoring the influence flows4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales41

Our new stakeholder is the individual who did not know herself that she was a stakeholder until… hang on, there, look, she just shared that link.And she added a little comment too. Atoms of influence.She is the modern manifestation of the netizen.A new stakeholder4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales42

Netizens are not ‘online publics’ – those are just the usual stakeholders with Internet access.Rather, netizens are stakeholders because they are online and because they are willing to act in ways that represent their moral compass so to speak, their feelings for what is right and wrong, or good and bad. Or perhaps they act simply on what makes them happy or sad. Excited or chillaxed.Netizens, not ‘online publics’4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales43

The netizen is a most complex being whose responses boil down to a synaptic-like mouse click, or not.And given that humans are unchanged, some act apparently rationally and some have no regard for logical discourse whatsoever, and most lay some place in between. Synapse4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales44

So instead of saying “organisations simply do not have the time or resources to cultivate relationships with everyone” we can say that organisations will find it advantageous to wield information technologies to ‘relate’ to the use (both directly and programmatically) of information technologies by others.Relate4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales45

The Social Web and Beyond464th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales

Social media – Facebook, Ping, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, blogging, debate at news websites, social news at Slashdot and Digg, etc.+ Applications – Outlook, Wordpress, Tweetdeck,Flipboard, My Taptu, the Facebook app, Foursquare, iTunes, Spotify, LinkedIn toolbar, Xobni, instant messenger, Skype,Shopkick, Blippy,Layar+ Services – email, Delicious, StumbleUpon, friend location information from Foursquare and Facebook Places, socially augmented search, etc.+ The network of devices…Defining the social web4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales47

The Internet of Things refers to a network of objects not historically connected. We can consider four kinds of objects:Electronic devices (washing machines, air conditioning units and cars)Electrical devices (lighting, electric heaters, and power distribution)Non-electrical objects(food and drink packages, clothes, and animals)Environmental sensors(measuring such variables as temperature, noise and moisture)The Internet of Things4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales48

Estimates for the total number of things connected to the Internet of Things in 2020 vary from 16 billion to more than thirty times this number.If emergent behaviours stem from 2 billion+ connected humans, we can expect similar from the ‘real world’ interacting with tens of billions of things.The manifestation of the Internet of Things, the Internetome, might become an organisational stakeholder of sorts.The Internet of Things /24th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales49

Web 1.0 – the web of documentsWeb 2.0 – the social Web (user generated content, participation)Web 3.0 / The Semantic Webthe Web itself understands the meaning of that content and participationthe Web as a universal medium for data, information and knowledge exchangeManifold ramifications for the influence / PR professional.And beyond4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales50

The Balanced scorecard, Strategy maps and ROIPlugging influence into business performance management.514th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales

The cascade52Mission – why do we exist?Values – what guides our behaviour?Vision – what do we want to be?Business objectives – to get from A to BStrategy – the plan to get us from A to BStrategic objectives – wholly necessary and sufficient to execute the planTactics – activities to achieve the strategic objectives. CASCADE4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales

To win, organisations must approach this cascade with professional rigour.7 out of 10 organisations simply fail to execute their strategies1.The Balanced Scorecard is the most popular approach to BPM…1. Balanced Scorecard InstituteBusiness performance management (BPM)4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales53

“The Balanced Scorecard transforms an organization’s strategic plan from an attractive but passive document into the 'marching orders' for the organization on a daily basis. It provides a framework that not only provides performance measurements, but helps planners identify what should be done and measured. It enables executives to truly execute their strategies.“It is a management system (not only a measurement system) that enables organizations to clarify their vision and strategy and translate them into action.” – The Balanced Scorecard InstituteThe Balanced Scorecard4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales54

The Balanced Scorecard Perspectives4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales55

The learning and growth perspective entails sustaining the ability to change and improve to execute the strategy and achieve the vision across each type of capital:Human

Organisation.Learning and growth4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales56

“The strategy map provides the visual framework for integrating the organization’s objectives in the four perspectives of a Balanced Scorecard.It illustrates the cause-and-effect relationships that link desired outcomes in the customer and financial perspectives to outstanding performance in critical internal processes.”– Strategy Maps: Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes, Kaplan and NortonStrategy Maps4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales57

“The strategy map identifies the specific capabilities in the organization’s intangible assets – human capital, information capital, and organization capital – that are required for delivering exceptional performance in the critical internal processes.”– Strategy Maps: Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes, Kaplan and NortonIntangibles4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales58

“Economic justification of these strategic investments can be performed, but not in traditional ways. The common approach is on a stand-alone basis: ‘Show the ROI of the new IT application’, or ‘Demonstrate the payback from the HR training program.’But each investment or initiative is only one ingredient in the bigger recipe. Each is necessary, but not sufficient. Economic justification is determined by evaluating the return from the entire portfolio of investments in intangible assets that will deliver the ROI from [the strategic imperative].”– Strategy Maps: Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes, Kaplan and NortonReturn on investment4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales59

The Influence Scorecard and ROIPlugging influence into business performance management.60

The Influence Scorecard is both part of and an augmentation to the Balanced Scorecard.Influence performance management (IPM) is the ease and effectiveness with which we can manage and learn from influence flows; integral to the process by which customers, citizens and all stakeholders interact with organisations and governments to broker mutually valuable, beneficial relationships.The Influence Scorecard4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales61

The influence strategy is the set of influence activities in which you must excel in order to help create a sustained difference in the marketplace. It facilitates organisational coherence, coordination and effectiveness of influence. The Balanced Scorecard and Strategy Maps ensure that investment in intangible assets has ROI built in by design.The Influence Scorecard ensures ROI is similarly built-in to all the influence activities identified in pursuit of the influence strategy.Influence strategy and ROI4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales62

Influence-centricity634th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales

Maturity of influence approach 4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales64

More of us are more influenced more often by the 150 nearest and dearest than the other six billion people combined.The evidence against influencer-centricity4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales65

Researched the influence of known peer influencers, social influencers and key influencers.Known peers “top the list”, and social influencers come next.… One is left wondering how “key influencers” got their name?!Fluent: The Razorfish Social Influence Marketing Report, 2009, http://fluent.razorfish.comRazorfish4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales66

We trust information most when it’s generated by friends, or people we know regardless of content form.Facebook and blog posts by companies were either "trusted completely" or "trusted somewhat" by 41% and 36% of respondents respectively.Few participants rated length of participation (15%) and number of fellow fans, followers and participants (12%) as extremely important.Consumers Pushing Companies into Social Media, Invoke Solutions, August 2010, http://www.invoke.com/index/08-04-10Invoke Solutions4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales67

What influences your choice of company, brand or product?71% – reviews from family members or friends46% – reviews in newspapers or magazine articles45% – reviews from friends or people they follow on social networking websites33% – reviews on blogs and message boards10% – reviews by celebrities.Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Tweets, Harris Interactive, 3rd June 2010, Table 5 http://www.harrisinteractive.com/vault/HI-Harris-Poll-Opinions-In-Social-Media-2010-06-03.pdfHarris Interactive4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales68

The role of ‘influentials’ is over-estimated.After The Tipping Point became a bestseller… Some studies concluded that there are in fact people in society who have great influence over others. But most research studies concluded that other factors play a much bigger part in how people are influenced.Whether someone can be influenced is as important as the strength of the influencer. We’re most influenced by the people around us.http://www.slideshare.net/padday/bridging-the-gap-between-our-online-and-offline-social-network slides 131-140. And his upcoming book, Social Circles, August 2011.Paul Adams, user experience researcher4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales69

…relatively few so-called friends are actually significant influencers of a given user’s behavior (22% is the sample mean), while substantial heterogeneity across users also exists. The authors also find that descriptors from user profiles … lack the power to determine who, per se, is influential.… friend counts and profile views also fall short of being able to identify influential site members.Determining Influential Users in Internet Social Networks, August 2010, Journal of Marketing Research.Drs. Trusov, Bodapati and Bucklin4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales70

Influentials don't govern person-to-person communication. We all do.A trend's success depends not on the person who starts it, but on how susceptible the society is overall to the trend – not how persuasive the early adopter is, but whether everyone else is easily persuaded.http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/122/is-the-tipping-point-toast.html?page=0%2C1Dr. Duncan Watts4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales71

Two significant elements of influence-centricity are:1. Focus on the influencedRelated to the emphases of Net Promoter ScoreOutcome oriented (eg, promoter score and revenue growth, securing insights into and understanding of current customers and other stakeholders) rather than output oriented (eg, column inches, ‘opportunities to see’, feedback forms completed). Influence-centricity4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales72

And:2. Tracing influenceInfluence-centricity4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales73

In Conclusion744th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales

Media has most definitely evolved, as have the ways in which we contemplate, design, communicate and execute strategy. And rather than technological evolution, we’re plainly in the midst of a technological revolution.We have no choice then but to reframe marketing and PR in the context of 21st Century technology, 21st Century media and disintermediation, and 21st Century articulation of and appreciation for business strategy.– The Business of Influence, Philip SheldrakeFit for the 21st Century4th March 2011 / Philip Sheldrake / Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License 2.0 England and Wales75

Influence in the age of the social web

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Influence in the age of the social web