Beth Kanter wrote up your webinar on Social Media Today (http://bit.ly/bethtarainfluence). I wrote a comment there that I would like to re-post here because the questions are relevant.

What’s your take on this?

– repost follows –

Terrific post, Beth. As always, you’ve given a lot for me to think about.

We need to give everyone who doesn’t work in the industry every day a little bit of credit, though. For the most part, people are really starting to get that “higher number of followers does not equal greater influence.” We’ve done our job well in educating decisionmakers on that front.

But we also need to acknowledge that focusing on results is not the ONLY way to demonstrate social media ROI. We cannot just say, “Trust us, we’ll know how we did at the end when we look at the results.” That’s the equivalent of going into an auto repair shop with your car, asking for an estimate, and getting told by the mechanic, “Don’t worry, we’ll put a price on at the end when we’re done. Trust us.” *grin*

So don’t get me wrong. I get that you’re saying “don’t focus on the numbers.” But I think it’s a very legitimate question for the person sitting at the other side of the table to ask, “Well, how should I determine the influence of this blogger I’m trying to connect with?” If you shouldn’t be pointing to the numbers (# of followers, Whuffie level, # of friends, etc.), then what should you point to?

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michael.rubin@empowermm.com // twitter.com/merubin // 847.370.3421

Not so sure about Chris Brogan not believing in his own fame. Starting his own media feed on Twitter; calling his blog “powerful” as in “I can outrank Timberland on Google”. He’s turning into as bad as Guy Kawasaki in the hype and self-belief book.

Sorry for a downer, otherwise agree with everything you say!

K.

What a great post – keep ‘em coming!
@askdebra

It’s so hard to get caught up in all the nice things being said, but that’s when we fall.

Keep up the great work and look forward to talking with you soon!

We know each other from various professional circles where we both attend and volunteer our time to assist the unemployed and underemployed.

I was touched to hear how what I do is inspiring her to launch her own business.

Time will tell if her business will have an impact that is typically measured in market share, revenue or gross profit. But what seemed certain is that I have seen her grow from someone who is shy and reserved to one with a sense of purpose (an impact).

It seems that both influence and impact have their place.

Influence is defined as:

the capacity or power of persons or things to be a compelling force on or produce effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of others: He used family influence to get the contract.

the action or process of producing effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of another or others

This definition shows that indeed not all popular stars have influence, but many do affect other peoples actions. Influence then is how much you inspire people to act which may go in a good or bad way. Impact on that matter is very important to measure because the impact you make in some people will also be important.

Basically I think the impact and influence (as defined by Simon) go inside the impact definition Tara is using. Both are important to measure how much we affect other person, business, area or whatever it may be.

I’m going to disagree with you about this. I think the disagreement runs around how you define influence. I distinguish between popularity (simple numbers game) and influence (what people do with what you’ve done). Popularity is not the same as influence and popularity is very bad proxy for influence. Pop stars are popular but not influential.

You can measure influence by looking at what other people do. You can put a number on someone’s Whuffie, but no single number will suffice. Influence is different for when you are a creator, discover or amplifier. A person’s influence is also dependent on the domain.

You, Tara, are influential in Social Media but have no influence in domain of Osteoarchaeology where as Dr Alice Roberts does.

Influence and Whuffie aren’t like a currency. Instead they are a badge, a proxy for experience and knowledge, that you can use to justify the price you charge for you services or is a shortcut to explaining why what you say or do has value.

We’ve been measuring influence and whuffie for a very long time. It is what a lot of history is. The saga’s about kings and heroes where ways for those people to demonstrate their influence. The more and longer those sagas where the greater the person, the more influential.