Influence vs. Authority vs. Engagement vs. Impact

I started this blog as a way to explore, share and discuss how each of us is influenced differently today. Ultimately, I put that understanding into practice everyday at Ogilvy. One of the truths today is that word of mouth is more important to marketers now than it was 5 years ago. That doesn't mean that WOM is new - that is a ridiculous idea. WOM is more important because:

• We can amplify it and sometime catalyse it (never really controlling it, though) based largely on digitas strategies and
• We can measure it. (we can not only measure online using the tools and methods we use at Ogilvy but we can also measure offline WOM (the majority) via indices like Ed Keller's TalkTrack)

Vocabulary

Which brings us to the meaning of words. We need them to measure. All new disciplines need to start by agreeing on a core language to talk about things. The Word of Mouth Marketing Association started by establishing recommended words and phrases to mean certain things. They remain the best rallying force in the 'industry'. (My all time favorite of theirs is "WOM unit." )

We are still debating the meaning and significance of words and the ideas beneath them. Which is a good thing. Yet to get to what will really move the discipline of word of mouth marketing and what we consider 'digital influence' forward - namely measurement - we need a stable set of criteria (meaning the words and their definitions).

The big 4 worth addressing quickly include Influence, Authority, Engagement and Impact.

Influence vs. Authority

Matthew Hurst of Data Mining (and Microsoft) has an interesting post on influence, which he considers 'popularity' and authority which he uses to describe that deeper level of expertise and knowledge some of us have on some topics. I don't think that equating influence with popularity is such a good idea. There are plenty of unpopular people, places and things that exert influence. Influence informs attitudes, decisions and actions. You can get a bald-faced view of how "influence" has historically been used by marketers in Robert Cialdini's book Influence: Science and Practice. 

As an experiemental social psychologist, Cialdini actually immersed himself in the world of "compliance profssionals" (marketers) to learn how they do the voodoo they do-do. He found that there are six principles evidenced in marketers' work:

• Reciprocation
• Consistency
• Social proof
• Liking
• Authority
• Scarcity

Does this view on 'compliance professionals' (what a scary term) take into account the influence my friend Robbie has on me about art? Conceptually, I think you can find peer-to-peer recommendations in his rubric. 

But Matthew Hurst is less focused on offering definitions of "influence" than he is making a solid point: people who know more about a topic and demonstrate that through the quality and depth of their writing (or "content") have more authority. Look into Caldini's view on Authority and you will see something similar. He concludes that far too many people respond to symbols of authority. In his case it's titles, clothing and automobiles. But it could be blog badges and, even, inbound links. Our defence against this automatic attribution of authority is to ask two questions:

• "Is this authority truly an expert? and
• How truthful can we expect the expert to be?"

Both Hurst and Caldini are getting to the same point: we have to move beyond the symbols of authority and judge the source and the work, itself.

Are Inbound Links (over the past 6 months) "authority?" Technorati says yes and also says that the crowd's behavior - linking - is the most democratic way of defining authority. That's a mistake. And somewhat repeating the flaw of relying on the symbols of authority. We have to examine the source and substance to judge authority. Inbound links are not a good enough nor reliable proxy. 

Engagement & Impact

Engagement will be the new metric. It will be indicative of brand loyalty and advocacy and predictive of conversion. Even now, we measure and report out on engagement. It becomes a measure of time spent and interactions. We see more and more emphasis on this concept in measurement circles. And we see different definitions coming from the advertising POV and from the PR and social media POV. More to come on this.

Which leads us to Impact. I just spent the day with Dr. Jennifer Scott, our managing Director of All Things Measureable. She simplifies the PR lens on measurement into three big buckets: Output (how many mentions); Impact (attitude or behavior shift); and Outcome (e.g. sales). We need to measure everything - all three categories. My only point here today is that the discussion of "influence" and "authority" better be couched in terms of the resulting impact or we are just haveing an academic discussion.

We need words - solid, stable, shared definitions - to measure.

In

Comments

[Matthew Hurst]

John,

Interesting post. Note, however, that I don't use 'popularity' here to mean positive popularity. Rather it is intended simply to mean the frequency of links. In other words, there is no account for positive or negative judgments associated with those links (which is partly why Technorati's approach is naive).

[John Bell]

Matthew - totally agree and it speaks to my point about the persistent need for definitions. I did assume you meant "positively" popular. But I now know you meant it in relation to frequency of links.
Great blog, by the way!