The critical importance of time when understanding influence
A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.
..and yet the above quote from Frank Herbert is exactly what many people ignore when trying to understand who is influential on any given topic. Conversations are not fixed points in time but are dynamic and agile with different participants contributing throughout.
Why This is Important?
If people are trying to influence a conversation to ensure their message resonates throughout their target audience it is essential that they target the right people, at the right time in the right manner. Too often people only focus on who are the right people but haven’t access to the right tools to help with the later areas.
Working in tandem with Ramine Tinati from the the University of Southampton, we analysed multiple conversations via a unique tool called Flow140 for common trends. The results were astounding and has directly impacted the way I work.
In previous discussions, I have explained how:
influence is defined by how information flows in a conversation
As part of this, much of the focus has been on two of the primary personas within the topology of influence. The idea starter and the amplifier – however, what I have only recently realised in my own Eureka moment is that a forgotten but critical player is the curator needs to be engaged with. This person, often overlooked due to their relatively low popularity has proven to be a significant driver of influence.
When analysing the three types below, it is clear to see that as marketers we must adopt both technology tools and sociological profiling to help us interact with people. Idea starters start early in great detail but often do not engage when the conversation reaches maturity and amplifiers publish and move on. If we were to engage with these two types when a conversation has been established in the market for some time because we rightly understood that these two people were instrumental in making this happen, then we would be wasting our effort. Instead it is the local expert who maintains the conversation and enables it to grow.
Maturity of Conversation Flow via Influence
Taking the Gartner hype cycle concept, I have adapted this to the growing maturity of a conversation topic. As marketers, we need to identify at what stage of a conversation we are engaging in, so that we in turn can ensure that our limited time and focus is spent concentrating on the right people who have the greatest chance of influencing others.
Stage 1: Conversation Trigger
Regression analysis of conversations often point to a few individuals who initiate the concept. These ‘idea starters’ often collaborate with curators to refine the concept and amplifiers to help publicize their thoughts. Engagement with the idea starter via collaborative discussion holds the greatest opportunity to influence the conversation.
Key influencer: Idea Starter
Preferred Engagement Behaviour: Collaborative discussion
Stage 2: Peak of Concurrent Conversations
When an ‘amplifier’ becomes interested in a conversation, it has the opportunity to reverberate around communities. With a large audience, an amplifier’s voice is disproportionately loud and for this reason has often been the target of many influence campaigns. Engagement with group has the greatest chance of success provided a relationship exists. However, this opportunity is often extremely hard to achieve and hence marketers have instead opted for influencing the influencers of this group (i.e. idea starters) or using paid methods (e.g. advertorials). Nevertheless, what cannot be doubted is that when an amplifier publicises content, it generates a huge volume of conversation.
Key influencer: Amplifier
Preferred Engagement Behaviour: Pre-packaged content that is easy to reproduce
Stage 3: Trough of Early Adoption
As any blogger will tell you, after the initial excitement of a meme, there comes a quick and sudden lull in conversation volume. What is most apparent is that the early catalysts for discussions no longer actively participate in the conversation. This is a crucial stage as it is here where the traditional key influencers of idea starters and amplifiers make way for the curator. Curators are the niche experts who are known within their circle as the go-to-person about a niche area. They may not have a huge number of followers but they maintain the conversation when others have left.
Key influencer: Curator
Preferred Engagement Behaviour: Q&A, scenario discussion
Stage 4: Slope of Enlightenment
For an idea to manifest, it takes time and evidence-based discussion to prove that it is an idea worth following. It is at this stage that once again we see the curator as being a focal point in idea adoption.
Stage 5: Plateau of Mainstream Adoption
You may never get as high a degree of volume of discussion as with the Peak of Concurrent Conversations but it is at this final stage where key commentators are dominating the conversation. Adoption of the idea is widespread with the initial idea starter and amplifier having progressed to other areas some time ago.
Proof of Theory – Flow140
In this video created with Flow140, you can see how idea starters start early in the conversation, amplifiers give it mass growth but it is the curators who make it last.
The Topology of Influence in Detail – idea starter, amplifier, curator, commentator and viewer
Idea Starters – this small collective of people are the creative brains behind many of the thoughts and ideas that other people talk about. Even though they may not necessarily have a large audience themselves, their insightful opinions often flow and are repeated throughout conversations long after they have left. They are typically well connected to other idea starters (where they collaborate on thoughts) and amplifiers (who they often rely upon to spread their views). Idea starters tend to be well connected to curators and amplifiers.
Amplifiers – these people frequently have a large audience and following. Their expertise may be deep but often they rely upon other contacts to provide opinion to which they then let their readership know about. They often have professional or commercial motivations such as journalists or analysts but are also more often than not self-created experts and avid sharers of information. Their advantage and their burden is their huge number of followers they need to keep satisfied. This behaviour ensures that they need to receive pre-packaged content that they can easily repost, retweet or repurpose so that their audience does not diminish. Amplifiers are frequently well connected to idea starters as the source of their content.
Curators – this group though having a far smaller audience are perhaps one of the most influential groups. Long after the idea starter and amplifier have left a conversation, it is the curator that maintains discussion. This niche expert collates information about a specific topic and is frequently sought after for advice about this specific area. They often take part in discussions with idea starters and are avid readers of topic-specific amplifiers.
Commentators – these people individually have little influence. Their behaviour often resembles little more than adding a comment without contributing greatly to the conversation. Their influence should not be ignored but should instead be viewed as a collective to measure the trend of opinion around a subject. An interesting factor is that this group are often self-moderating – when negative comments are posted often these contributors will often intervene to correct inaccuracies or a unfounded negative views.
Viewers – In the conversation this invisible group who we call viewers don’t leave a foot print except through Google. Indeed it is through Google, and the impact of viewers on search results, that these other groups become influential and evolve their role within a conversation. Authority rests with the search patterns of those who simply observe in a democratic world.
Conclusion
In order to stand the greatest for marketers to influence a conversation, they must appreciate what maturity stage the conversation currently is at. Upon doing that they will need to target the most appropriate person from within the topology and engage with them according to their behavioural characteristics.
End note: We are currently beta-testing the next iteration of TweetLevel which will allow anyone to identify what type of influencer a tweeter is via its algorithm. If you would like a beta-access password, please contact @jonnybentwood
Filed under: social media | 1 Comment
Tags: amplifier, conversation flow, curator, edelman, idea starters, influence, topology of influence, tweetflow, tweetlevel
syndicate and subscribe
RSS feed
Technobabble 2.0 
I also left a comment on this post where it appeared in SM Today – but thought I would post the same here, since I find the moderation delay irritating and disruptive to conversation!
Interesting analysis. As you say, time is very important – conversations are not fixed points. But could it also be that conversations are not fixed things. We tend to talk about The Conversation that marketers need to influence and from this progress to the assumption that we need to identify certain individuals who play a role in influencing this conversation (Idea Starters, Amplifiers, Curators etc.). Could it be that conversation is only ever a process, not a thing? There may be conversations about a brand, but there is no such thing as The Conversation about a brand. This is just something marketing directors want to believe exists, because it becomes something tangible (like an ad) that they can then seek to understand, influence and measure.
I am becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the ways we are trying to analyse conversations and ascribe roles to certain types of people in order to construct targeting or influence models. Perhaps it would be more useful to understand Idea Starting, for example, as a function, rather than a person. It is a bit like digital influence – it lives within a process rather than being vested within people who can be termed digital influencers.