Why fifty influencers?
You’d be amazed how often I get asked, “So, why Influencer Fifty?” Easy answer: because we identify a minimum of fifty influencers for our clients as a kick-start to their influencer community programs.
But why fifty? What if we only want 25? Or what if we want 100?
It turns out that, for most B2B markets, fifty is the optimal number of people to reach out to, to manage appropriately, and to draw some conclusions from. Too few influencers, and you risk identifying just the obvious influencers: analysts and journalists. Too many, and you’ll get swamped: few organisations can appropriately manage more than fifty influential individuals.
Often, our clients will know some of the influencers we identify (though they usually don’t know their relative ranking). So we typically provide the top 75 or 80 influencers, so that they still have 50 or so individuals that are new to them.
In four years we’ve never had a client that has known more than half their influencer community. Usually it’s 10-15% - that’s between 5 and 8 influencers known to a vendor organisation.
But why fifty? What if we only want 25? Or what if we want 100?
It turns out that, for most B2B markets, fifty is the optimal number of people to reach out to, to manage appropriately, and to draw some conclusions from. Too few influencers, and you risk identifying just the obvious influencers: analysts and journalists. Too many, and you’ll get swamped: few organisations can appropriately manage more than fifty influential individuals.
Often, our clients will know some of the influencers we identify (though they usually don’t know their relative ranking). So we typically provide the top 75 or 80 influencers, so that they still have 50 or so individuals that are new to them.
In four years we’ve never had a client that has known more than half their influencer community. Usually it’s 10-15% - that’s between 5 and 8 influencers known to a vendor organisation.
Labels: influencers
posted by Duncan Brown at 3:10 pm
1 Comments:
Hello,
while I agree with much of your theories and tenets, it is worthwhile to noet some interesting new research from Columbia in the USA from Duncan Watts about the nature of influencers and perhaps the quandary of determining their power. And that it may be the fact there is a group of easily influenced people at work rather than the power of the influencer. His work I think is important is ensuring we do not go down only one path.
I have written about this in my blog this week on www.spreadgoodpractice.blogspot.com
Good book by the way.
Sarah
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