Discussion topics published in the last week included:

* Who are influencers and their relevance in word-of-mouth marketing (WOM)
* Influencers don't exist (a hotly debated blog post by Jeff Jarvis)
* Online influencers exist but they aren't necessarily who we suspected they might be

For this post, I will focus on the behaviors of influencers described in a recent study and a surprising finding about influencers' social media channel preferences. 

Influencers share a common behavioral trait – their willingness to tell others about products and services.
The eMarketer article, Social Influencers Get Talking,summarized the findings of a white paper from ICOM titled: "The Influencer: A Consumer Voice with Legs."  Here are the key behaviors influencers exhibit:

* A desire to talk to others about their personal experience with products and services
* A higher likelihood to say other people follow their advice
* An enjoyment in convincing others to try new things
* They look for new experiences and like to know about new products first
* Telling friends when they have problems with a brand
* Participating in word-of-mouth activity is an "inherent" desire
* They restrict sharing their opinions to only those product categories personally important to them

Therefore, these influencer behaviors are describing "Groundswell Creators" or "Groundswell Critics" — Right?
In the book, Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, the authors define a "groundswell" as: a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other instead of from companies. 

The authors also introduce The Social Technographics Ladder to describe the interpersonal and technology behaviors of people participating in the groundswell.  These people groupings start at the top of the ladder with "Creators" and end with the bottom of the ladder with "Inactives":

(A) Creators:  Online consumers who at least once a month publish a blog or article online, maintain a Web page, or upload videos or audio to sites like YouTube.

(B) Critics: People who react to other content online, post comments on blogs or online forums, post ratings or reviews, or edit wikis.

(C) Collectors: They save URLs and tags on social-bookmarking services like del.icio.us, vote for sites on a service like Digg, or use RSS feeds on services like Bloglines.  Their important role – organizing the massive content produced by Creators and Critics.

(D) Joiners: These folks participate in or maintain profiles on a social networking site like Facebook or MySpace.

(E) Spectators: People who consume what the rest produce — blogs, online videos, podcasts, forums, and reviews. They represent nearly half of the online adult population and are the largest group. 

(F) Inactives: These are the nonparticipants in online activities.

Importance of The Social Technographics Ladder Groupings and Word-of-Mouth (WOM) Dynamics.  Li and Bernoff refer to "energizing the groundswell" or the power of WOM by connecting with and engaging your most committed and enthusiastic customers.  In their model, the Creators and Critics are the influencers because they talk about products/services by publishing blog posts, commenting on blogs, and writing ratings and reviews.  Also, the Spectators (the largest Groundswell grouping) read the blogs and comments written by the Creators and Critics.

Thus, if you can successfully encourage the Creators or Critics to write about your product/service, the people further down the Social Technographics Ladder will start to hear about your offerings.  And, the impact can be very powerful because consumers believe other consumers more than the media or the product/service manufacturer. 

Example: Critics within the Male Video Game Players Population.  According to another eMarkter article, Gamer Guys Influence Community,25% of male video game players have written an online product review.  That proportion of online reviewers rises to one-third among "heavy gamers" aged 25 to 34.  If the Groundswell model holds true, these Critics will then motivate the Joiners and Spectators to either purchase or not purchase the video game reviewed.    

Surprise! Influencers don't prefer or use any specific social media channel more than an average user. 
This finding from the ICOM white paper really surprises me.  I would have thought influencers prefer blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and review sites (i.e., Amazon Reviews) because these social media channels enable "talking" (just like the Groundswell Model).  Apparently, the influencers' level of social media participation isn't much different from the average population.

So, how do influencers prefer to share information online — email.  Looks like email isn't dead after all. 

Conclusion: Reaching influencers requires integrating our social media communications with traditional marketing tactics
So does this mean we should shift our marketing communications to email campaigns in our attempts to engage influencers?  Not quite.  But, the ICOM study makes valid points about integrating marketing communications with both traditional and social media tactics. Here are two direct quotes from the study:

* Marketers should target who they want to reach, examine the various channels and then integrate the two assure they are hitting all touch points.

* For example, since influencers like to talk person-to-person, direct mail may be a highly effective method for getting your physical from the influencers to their networks — while still being able to direct their interaction with your brand in a way that meets your goals, that is drive them to your corporate website or Facebook page

These quotes immediately make me think of key points from Beth Harte's post, The Dichotomy Issue: Social Media Marketing Versus Classic Marketing:

* Social media gives us a window into what our customers are really thinking

* We can better understand where and how they interact

* We now have better data that can help us understand how to better serve them (especially engage them)

* Marketers need to be flexible, able to adjust, and most importantly, able to provide pertinent and timely information when, where, and how customers/potential customers need/want it

There's no question about the role influencers play in how organizations, brands, and reputations can be perceived (positively or negatively).  So, if they have a preference for obtaining and sharing information that may be different from what we thought, why not just go with the flow?  Just like Beth says in her post, we need to flexibly provide all customers the required information in the form that they want it. 

Just because we as marketing professionals find social media "shiny, exciting, and new" doesn't necessarily mean it should be practiced at the complete expense of other traditional marketing tactics.

I hope you'll stop by for Part 2 of my series of posts on influencers.  In Part 2, I'm going to discuss some of the online behaviors with influencers I've seen with content from my blog. 

Thank you for reading and if you enjoyed this post, please share your thoughts in the comments section or subscribe to my blog.

Photo Credit: Flickr by Marc_Smith