{"id":5586,"date":"2014-09-02T00:00:10","date_gmt":"2014-09-02T00:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/?p=5586"},"modified":"2014-12-20T16:38:58","modified_gmt":"2014-12-20T16:38:58","slug":"influence-vanity-metrics-and-katy-perry-guest-post-via-joshstaubin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/2014\/09\/influence-vanity-metrics-and-katy-perry-guest-post-via-joshstaubin\/","title":{"rendered":"Influence, Vanity Metrics and Katy Perry ~guest post via @JoshStAubin"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

Originally posted at\u00a0<\/span>Joshua St. Aubin<\/a>,\u00a0<\/span>August 20, 2014<\/span><\/h4>\n<\/header>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

If influence was completely based on vanity metrics like follower count, Katy Perry would be themost influential person on Twitter<\/a>\u00a0with Justin Bieber following closely behind. Unless you\u2019re a teenage girl, I think we can agree that their opinions do very little to influence decisions we make. Influence is much more than a popularity contest and isn\u2019t one-size-fits-all. We don\u2019t all have the same interests and to imply importance on something as arbitrary as the number of followers just doesn\u2019t work. Popularity can be a factor, but influence goes so much deeper than surface appearances.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Looks can be deceiving.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"profile-samples\"<\/a><\/div>\n

If follower count directly identified the most influential people, then we\u2019d agree that someone with 17K followers would be more influential than someone with 10K followers. Simple math, right? But follower count alone doesn\u2019t tell the whole story. If you take the top 5 CMOs from Forbes\u2019s list of the\u00a0\u201cMost Influential Big Brand CMOs on Twitter\u201d<\/a>, 3 of those, including Mashable\u2019s CMO\u00a0Stacy Martinet<\/a>, have fewer followers than\u00a0@RetweetThunder<\/a>, a retweet buying site. And@SplashTabCases<\/a>, a profile selling suction mounts for tablets, has more followers than 4 of those same CMOs, including Google\u2019s\u00a0Nikesh Arora<\/a>. Once you add the details, it\u2019s pretty apparent that this thinking is flawed. To think that the CMOs for Mashable and Google could be less influential than these other two profiles is crazy, even though they fall short according to the metrics. In fact, if we completely remove followers from the conversation, I think we\u2019d agree that the CMOs on Forbes\u2019s entire list would hold up to that challenge. There are quite a few people that I follow that might not be considered influential based on their follower count alone, but\u00a0Brooke Ballard<\/a>,\u00a0Nicole Miller<\/a>,\u00a0Chris Tuff<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Sebastian Rusk<\/a>\u00a0are people who I intently listen to when they have something to say. It\u2019s easy to lose sight of the important information when you take vanity metrics out of context. It takes influencing only one person to become influential.<\/p>\n

A profile bio and a couple tweets.<\/strong>
\nNow that we\u2019ve established that follower counts are unreliable to determine influence, we can depend on profile bios, right? Wrong. Bios help to create expectations about the kind of content you should plan on receiving, but there\u2019s only one way to completely know. You can learn a lot about a user within the first couple of tweets. If they engage with their audience or are just broadcasters, how frequently they post, and if their tweets are even relevant to your interests. For example, by looking at some of Mark Schaefer\u2019s tweets I\u2019m able to tell that he posts frequently about topics that I\u2019m interested in and he engages his audience. It\u2019s not about the quantity of followers that creates influence as much as it is about the quality of the content, community and engagement that\u2019s been created that counts. You don\u2019t need any special algorithms or fancy tools to determine any of that. The most important information is right at the top of every feed.<\/p>\n

\"Mark<\/a><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Influence is individual.<\/strong>
\nInfluence can be very different for every person. What influences you might not influence anyone else. Without context, it falls flat. CNBC might be considered the leader in financial news and they might have the most informative twitter feed for all things investments, but investments don\u2019t excite me like marketing and social media. So when Gary Vaynerchuk or Ted Rubin post a tweet or a new YouTube clip, no matter what the subject is, I\u2019m listening attentively. You can\u2019t force someone to be influenced any more than you can force someone to be influential. It just isn\u2019t one-size-fits-all.<\/p>\n

Just because someone appears to have all the ingredients to be influential doesn\u2019t mean they will be. Even Katy Perry can\u2019t influence everyone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

\n

10 thoughts on \u201cInfluence, Vanity Metrics and Katy Perry<\/span>\u201d<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally posted at\u00a0Joshua St. Aubin,\u00a0August 20, 2014   If influence was completely based on vanity metrics like follower count, Katy Perry would be themost influential person on Twitter\u00a0with Justin Bieber following closely behind. Unless you\u2019re a teenage girl, I think we can agree that their opinions do very little to influence decisions we make. Influence … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,7],"tags":[1370,479,1899],"class_list":["post-5586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-tedrubin","tag-ronr","tag-ror","tag-tedrubin-3"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5586"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5590,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5586\/revisions\/5590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}