Page 175 - Social Media Marketing

the numerical influence score. While it’s good to have highly influential people in your 153
contacts database, it’s also important to recognize that influence doesn’t necessarily
flow from the most influential directly to your prospects or others in whom you have ■ KNOW YOUR INFLUENCERS
an interest in reaching, Instead, a significant amount of influence actually flows along
what are called weak ties.

Weak ties are the casual bonds that exist across members of a community.
Think of weak ties as “knowing someone who knows someone who….” For example,
in a typical Facebook or LinkedIn network, there are people you know directly and
people who are connected to the people you know. These types of bonds are extremely
important in understanding how information passes through a network, and ultimately
how the information that relates to your product or service, or your brand, company,
or organization, gets to the people who are considering some aspect of an offer.

Ripple6: The Role of Weak Ties

Ripple6 offers a community platform solution set that leverages the strengths of weak ties between
community members. You can learn more about Ripple6 here:

http://www.ripple6.com/

Community tools like Ripple6 utilize weak ties, as do platforms like LinkedIn.
Ripple6 creates connections between community members by facilitating the transfer
of information between people (profiles) who are not themselves directly connected. It
does this by making it easy to pose questions, for example, to people with whom you
are connected and who in turn can post these questions to others in their networks
who might have an answer for you. LinkedIn uses this methodology when it assists in
introductions. LinkedIn very clearly shows the social graph as it applies between peo-
ple: When a LinkedIn member wants to be introduced to someone specific, LinkedIn
shows the member the chain that connects people he or she knows to the people he or
she ultimately wants to reach, and then sets up the intermediate “pass along” process.

Influence flows across the Social Web in exactly the same way. By taking care
to understand not only who your influencers are but also how they are connected to
pockets within your market that you may not otherwise have a direct connection to,
you can significantly increase the likelihood that the conversations you participate in
will ultimately involve these people. This kind of quantitative information is especially
useful in tuning an outreach program: Whether the goal is spreading your message
further—think blogger outreach efforts—or building up your customer-driven intel-
ligence program, knowing who is talking about the issues that matter to you and how
these people are connected to others is vital.