The influence of blogs
At the recent Unicom conference on Social Network Tools, I showed a chart illustrating the declining influence of analysts and journalists on IT decision makers (ITDM). The chart also showed the recent increase in influence of bloggers. The chart caused a bit of a stir.
Our research shows that the average ITDM apportions no more than 45% of influence to analysts and journalists. The remaining influence is spread over numerous influencer types. Bloggers show the biggest increase, from zero in 2004 to 8% in 2006.
Stowe Boyd, a blogging guru, claimed in the conference that in the US the influence of blogs now exceeds that of analysts and journalists. Can this be true?
Firstly, there is some overlap between the two communities. For example, Forrester’s Charlene Li and Business Week’s Stephen Baker have highly rated blogs. It will be interesting to watch the transition from traditional analyst/journalists media (reports, newspapers, etc) to blogs.
Secondly, from my (so far, limited) look at blogs, the main audience for bloggers is … other bloggers. Are ITDMs reading blogs? Do CEOs read blogs? Or are they still influenced by more traditional sources? Clearly it depends on the individual and the market. But my thinking is that the influence of blogging is limited, other than within the blogosphere.
Finally, are we seeing the emergence of a truly new type of influencer – the blogger? Or are we seeing the use of a new medium (the blog) which allows existing influencers to become more obvious?
My sense is that blogging and other social networking tools are similar to the worldwide web in the mid-1990s. Those businesses that colonised the early web pioneered the new media, worried the old guard and promised to the change the business world (remember the “New Economy”?). But most early adopters failed, and the web became a mainstream tool for all – nearly every business now has a web site.
So blogging will, in time, be done by everyone (or every business). It’s this interim, disruptive time that makes blogging interesting now. Geoffrey Moore would say that blogging is in “the chasm,” – blogging is about to climb out into mainstream adoption. And its distinct influence will dissipate accordingly.
Our research shows that the average ITDM apportions no more than 45% of influence to analysts and journalists. The remaining influence is spread over numerous influencer types. Bloggers show the biggest increase, from zero in 2004 to 8% in 2006.
Stowe Boyd, a blogging guru, claimed in the conference that in the US the influence of blogs now exceeds that of analysts and journalists. Can this be true?
Firstly, there is some overlap between the two communities. For example, Forrester’s Charlene Li and Business Week’s Stephen Baker have highly rated blogs. It will be interesting to watch the transition from traditional analyst/journalists media (reports, newspapers, etc) to blogs.
Secondly, from my (so far, limited) look at blogs, the main audience for bloggers is … other bloggers. Are ITDMs reading blogs? Do CEOs read blogs? Or are they still influenced by more traditional sources? Clearly it depends on the individual and the market. But my thinking is that the influence of blogging is limited, other than within the blogosphere.
Finally, are we seeing the emergence of a truly new type of influencer – the blogger? Or are we seeing the use of a new medium (the blog) which allows existing influencers to become more obvious?
My sense is that blogging and other social networking tools are similar to the worldwide web in the mid-1990s. Those businesses that colonised the early web pioneered the new media, worried the old guard and promised to the change the business world (remember the “New Economy”?). But most early adopters failed, and the web became a mainstream tool for all – nearly every business now has a web site.
So blogging will, in time, be done by everyone (or every business). It’s this interim, disruptive time that makes blogging interesting now. Geoffrey Moore would say that blogging is in “the chasm,” – blogging is about to climb out into mainstream adoption. And its distinct influence will dissipate accordingly.
Labels: influencer marketing, influencers
posted by Duncan Brown at 11:57 am
4 Comments:
Influencing and making/breaking deals are two different things.
You research is interesting but calls for a definition of the word "influencing".
Advertising might influence an outsourcing decision.
Analysts advising a customer looking to outsource a call centre may actually have a direct impact on vendor selection and contract T&C's.
Thoughts?
This is why we define Influence is (currently) four dimensions:
- Market reach
- Frequency of impact
- Quality of impact
- Closeness to decision
This allows us to differentiate, say, analysts with high market reach and quality from bloggers with high frequency, and from consultants with high proximity to decision makers.
We are always reviwing Influence as a concept and will shortly add further dimensions, based on our extensive research and client engagements.
Watch this space!
Duncan,
This definition is terribly troublesome. For example, it will over-weight the vendors's own salespeople and underweight reference accounts. I don't know how you combine these factors, but if you are not using weights that you've obtained statistically (for example if you are summing or, even worse, multiplying) then you'll have a substantial bias.
Duncan C.
Defining influence is always a tricky business – it’s an abstract concept that means different things in different contexts.
I’d say three things, briefly:
- we are continually reviewing our scoring criteria and methodology, based on our ongoing research for our clients;
- our model accounts for reference clients, vendor staff and a host of other variables
- in the absence of viable alternative definitions and scoring models, ours is performing well and our clients understand it. They don’t find it troublesome at all.
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