What constitutes quality in an influencer?

One of Influencer50’s criteria by which we score and rank influencers is Quality of Impact. But what is 'quality' in terms of influence?

Firstly, quality is not an all-or-nothing concept. It might be obvious if an individual has a lot of it, or none at all, but what about the large grey area in the middle?

We use Robert Cialdini’s book (bible?) on influence to provide the framework for our Quality measure. In his discussion on authority, Cialdini poses two questions:

1. Is this person truly an expert (measured by the person’s credentials and the relevance of those credentials to the matter in hand)?
2. How truthful can we expect the expert to be?

We simplify these to 'Expertise' and 'Independence.'

In the book we discuss the relative importance of these two dimensions, and offered the following diagram:



The diagram implies that 100% expertise and 0% independence means that influence is severely constrained. Similarly, 0% expertise and 100% independence also represents low influence. But is this true in the real world?

There are many cases where people have 100% independence and 0% expertise. My own influence on the wine trade is a good example of this (never trust my wine suggestions), and it translates (intuitively) to low influence. But is the converse true? I think I’d rather buy wine from an expert who works for a wine producer, even if they recommend their own wine. In fact, I’d surprised if they didn’t. As long as they’ve declared their interest I know that the advice I’m getting is trustworthy, if qualified.

Back in the real world, can vendors be influence on the market? Absolutely. No-one expects them to be independent, but they can demonstrate their ample expertise, and be influential.

So the relationship between expertise and independence looks more like this:



In other words, you’ve got to have some minimum level of relevant expertise to be influential at all. Independence increases influence, but it is not a pre-requisite for it.