The Future of Influence

Liveblog on “The Future of Influence” talk, by Nate Elliott, Principal analyst, Forrester Research, Northern Voice Conference, Vancouver B.C, February 21 2009

- In my line of work, I hear a lot of people asking me about word-of-mouth marketing. But power of consumer influence been around for centuries: Tupperware, Amway, Avon. They all do billion in sales each year based on consumer to consumer influence.

- Companies ID influential consumers, give them something valuable (content, a product) then they find ways to motivate them to pass that message along.

- Not all influence is created equal. The internet didnt’ invent influence but carries a lot of power. New influencer: People active in social media. Motivations? To share their thoughts and opinions.  Classic influentials: Internet users who are the first person others come to for recommendations. Most of the latter group only influentials in a single product category. Former group has a broader base. “They know quite a lot but they talk more as well.”

- New influentials exert active influence by proactively giving advice, classics are instead “go to” people. “If we didn’t ask them for advice there is very limited chance they wil give it.”

- New influentials want people to hear them. Why? A genuine sense of altruism, a desire to be famous. Even if new influencers are complete morons it wont matter because other people believe them.

- How do you change nature of consumer influence? Number of new influencers is only going to grow. Based on population of online Canadians ages 18-25:

• Nearly half (69 percent) are consuming social media; reading blogs, comments.
• Some 67 percent are joiners, who join social networks.
• Just 28 percent are actual creators
• While 27 percent are “critics.”

- Classic influence is going to remain stagnant.

- People are going to start getting overwhelmed by influence. Not only is there a lot of info out there about products and services, but the information is getting richer. Cites tripadvisor.com. Used to ask guests for one review. Now they ask for four different reviews: one about quality of service, location etc. The advice is now a lot richer.  I can see photos of the rooms taken by guests w/stuff spread about.

- New Infuentials not growing leaps and bounds; there are not enough centralized sources of advice. Consumers don’t know how to I.D. the advice that is relevant to them.

- 4,000 reviews on an amazon listing are more annyoing than just two. How do I find out what an “average’ reader thinks of this book? Too many fan reviews. It doesn’t matter to me what honeymooners or backpackers think of my hotel. I want to know what other business people thought about it.

- Needed: Spread of reviewer profiles. Burpee Seeds sells seeds online, important that they have reviewer profiles. I need to know how that seed has worked for people like me. Has the person been gardening for one year or 20? What state do they live in, etc?

- Needed: “Integration of social graph.” To see what the people I know and trust every day think. The first few reviews on a site should be from people in my network, ie. my top facebook friends. FB tried this and there was a user uproar. Better implementations in the future will work very well. People are going to need that to sort through the relevance.

- Implement basic user profiles

- Recognize and reward the best contributors by engaging with them.

- Sites help you find the most relevant advice.

- Consumers, give sites a chance to prove they are trustworthy you can share your opinions/profiles with them seamlessly.

Talk finished. 11:27