Ripple: Social Network Influencers

While you are reading the presentation outline below I’d like you to think about the Twitter change today. Today Twitter turned off “see replies to those I’m not following”. Therefore if I’m (@SilkCharm) having a conversation with @garyphayes, and you follow me but not him, you used to see my conversation, even though it’s “one sided” for you. Twitter are planning changing it – you won’t see my tweet at all.

Now Gone – you don’t have the option to opt-in  to see their conversation anymore.

This has sever impact for Twitters “ripple-ability”. Read below and think about the fact that you will no longer see the tweets if they are suggestions or recommendations to someone else.  The old “Friend of a Friend” (FOAF) gets screwed – you won’t see me talking to a mutual friend because you didn’t know they were on Twitter, and hence weren’t following them. Before today, you would just add them. Now you remain oblivious.

Here’s my presentation from today at Affiliate@Sydney- just 8 slides in 10 minutes. Then we yabbered on,  in the panel.

The main thing for me was to chat with Affiliate marketers about how social networks pass information around. You don’t need a big social network yourself. But you need influencers that can carry your tweet, or blog link, or widget selling eBay stuff to another site and so on.

Blogs are fun, but they take a lot of time. They are primarily one-to-many channel (blogger sets theme, tone and subject) and the social network sees the “finished product” – and can leave questions/comments/reviews. They don’t come with an inbuilt audience.

Dunno why I called this one the timeline, the next one shows ‘over time’ better. But it does show that influencers can bridge social networks carrying the information across from one community to another. We tweet a YouTube video that we found on a blog linked to on Facebook.

Timing is not the same in social networks that it is in broadcast channels. The long tail is very much in evidence. And while some viral material may be popular quickly, the numbers really start to show themselves over time. Don’t try a campaign that has a “be quick or lose out” appeal online. They don’t work as well as those that build up traffic and engagement slowly. People (consumers) are learning this themselves, slowly. Time after time, everyday people using Chip-In widgets for fundraising get a lot of angry comments when it closes after a week – “I only just heard about it”!  User generated content – blog articles, videos, podcasts, take time to gain traction.

Ack you guys must be sick of this Social Influence/Reputation diagram by now. But it’s important.

• If you don’t fill in your profile (say, no avatar on Twitter or bio),
• and you don’t connect to people (no followers on Twitter, or else 1000′s you are following, but noone following back)
• and you don’t create content and comments for us to view (tweets, replies, links on Twitter)
• then we can’t judge your reputation or value to our network so often will bypass you (not follow you back).

and that would suck.

You only get out of your social network what you put in. You don’t trust us with your bio, general location and some kind of a picture? Well, we won’t trust you back!

And your mum told you not to hang around with those boys or you’d be tarred with the same brush. We look to see who you connect with.

I also mentioned on the panel Darren Rowse (@Problogger) – his Problogger.net blog is a great example of an on-topic blog that is Australia’s most read blog, and he takes that appeal across other networks including Twitter where he has a further 60,000 readers. If he blogs something, he creates a wave of tweets and retweets – even people not connected to Problogger gain the information, through the 6 degrees of seperation (he may not be my friend but he’s a friend of a friend so I see that information).

I raised the issue at the event of widget sales. When eBay encouraged developers to use their API (access their database) they increased sales by 86% . That means an additional 86% of sales didn’t have to go to the eBay site, they used a developers widget. Like buying on Facebook from eBay or Amazon rather than logging into those sites themselves. I thought that might have implications in the future for Affiliate marketers.

Lastly I pointed out that widget revenue streams sit in the top left corner – consumer selling to other consumers an getting a clip of the sale, or business to consumer sales with a clip going to the consumer (blogger or Facebooker or whatever).  If you’ve figured out how Google ads works, then you know what I’m talking about.  (note: all the social media revenue streams are here on my social media monetization post)

Contextual, reputation advertising brought by an influencer with the convenience of a widget (rather than clicking through to another site).

Anyway, the last slide was a set up for Jay to talk about blog monetization and Lee Hopkins social media monetization session in the afternoon. All of which I missed cos I got chatting with the Unseen TV (@UnseenTV1) in the Menzies Piano Room. I think they ran out of digital tape. Heh.