OK, I’ve another bit of Altimeter research to recommend:  “The Rise of Digital Influence.”  As with many studies on social media, content marketing and other areas of the still developing digital world, this one raises as many important questions as it answers.  It does a good overview job of answering the question  “What is digital influence, and how can my brand take advantage of it?”  It completely begs the issue of “When will ‘sparking desired effects’ among the influential digerati slip over into anti-social, trust-damaging marketing manipulation?”

WHAT IS DIGITAL INFLUENCE, AND HOW CAN BRANDS LEVERAGE IT?

Let’s back up to the first half of that question.  The report helpfully tries to level up the notion of digital influence from one of mere electronic word of mouth – with influencers being those having the most “mouths” follow and repeat what they say – to a more nuanced understanding of digital influence, which the report alliterates as being comprised of

Reach:  Popularity, proximity and goodwill
Resonance:  Frequency, period, amplitude
Relevance:  Authority, trust, affinity

USING DIGITAL INFLUENCE VERSUS PEDDLING IT
The report goes on to talk about how “businesses can shape and steer positive conversations and… desired outcomes,” and offers case histories wherein companies offered often very expensive “incentives”  to influencers in exchange for tacit help engaging their followers to help achieve those “desired outcomes.”  It also mentions that “… the brand borrows the social capital of the individual to appear approachable and desirable to their followers.”

This brings me to the real issue at hand: the difference between “borrowing” social capital and buying it. When your approach is to attract digital influencers via free phones, expensive trips and the like, the balance tips in the direction of “buying.”

PAYING FOR INFLUENCE BUILDS NO MORE TRUST IN MARKETING THAN IT DOES IN POLITICS
So what’s the harm?  The potential harm is the same we see in the politics of pay-to-play states like the one I live in, or in the influence-peddling hallways of Congress:  once consumers, like voters, wise up, long-term damage is done to the trust required to make relationships, or even entire systems, work.

HOW TO BUILD SOCIAL TRUST
While the report evinces some of the subtle arrogance that typifies any hot trend and its new masters (sample section heading:  “The New Era of Consumer Influence: When Nobodies Become Somebodies), it also highlights (though not as much as I think it should) two keys to keeping consumer trust while paying to piggyback on the authority and relationships of others:

1.    Provide real value to develop honest support from digital influencers
It’s a central tenant of all social and content marketing that’s it’s not all about your brand. As the report puts it “Rather than ask connected consumers to share random or purely promotional updates related to your business, provide them with ideas, content, links, or editorial suggestions…”  In short, provide incentives that have a natural value to your target influencers (and their followers).

2.     Be aggressively honest and open – transparency begets trust
It’s not enough to simply comply with the FTC Endorsement disclosure guidelines for blogs, social media, etcetera. Marketers would be wise to follow the lead of Virgin America, who, as mentioned in one of the Altimeter report case histories, assertively encouraged an honest, no-holds-barred response from the digital recruitees by announcing, “We do not want to ‘buy’ your tweets.  You are receiving the product because you are influential and have authority on topics related to the product… You are welcome to tell the world you love the product, you hate the product, or say nothing at all.”

What are you doing to create relationships with digital influencers – and how are you doing it?

Brian Solis had an interesting post recently (OK, many of his posts are interesting), touching on a critical corporate turf issue in the use, or misuse, of social media: namely, who within an enterprise should be managing social engagement?  He notes that the marketing department and/or its attendant agencies typically control social media… and in much the manner, it seems, that they’d handle any traditional media:  send out the message as if not expecting a response, or not being accountable for responding to consumer input, good or bad.

SOCIAL MEDIA TURNS ANTI-SOCIAL WHEN THERE’S NO RESPONSE
This reveals itself as an even more significant issue than you might imagine when Solis goes on to cite an Altimeter Group study that shows, as above, the corporate departments most likely to be controlling social media are marketing or marketing communications, while the least likely is customer service.  So much for customer-centricity as a brand-building orientation, especially when you consider other research, by Maritz and evolve24, which documents the fact that 64% of consumers tweeting to a company expect a their tweets to be read… but only 29% get a response.

THROW A PARTY AND THEN IGNORE THE GUESTS?
Social media is the big corporate marketing party these days, and it’s attracting a standing room only crowd.  But building brand engagement, trust and loyalty through social media – or even preventing its destruction – requires being a good host.  That means not only serving up the tweets, but replying in a meaningful way, too.

The rewards for doing so are significant.  The Maritz/evolve24 study shows that while a paltry 29% receive a response when tweeting a beloved brand, such responses elicit what can only be assumed as a loyalty-inducing state:  “32% and 51.5% said they either loved [the response] or liked it, respectively.”

IT’S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE SOCIAL ME-ME-MEDIA
Of course, it’s more than just a problem of organizational responsibility – it’s an issue of corporate mindset.  An A.T. Kearney report from December 2011 illustrates how marketers too often still see social media as they do traditional media, simply another platform for one-way messaging rather than active dialogue.  According to the study, related in a post by Melissa McNaughton, some 94% of brands on Facebook direct fans to pages that offer no opportunity to comment or initiate conversation. In short, they’ve turned an interactive medium into an inactive one, simply inviting consumers to “turn the page” as they would with a brochure.

IS YOUR BRAND TRULY SOCIAL?
What are your favorite examples of brands that are truly social – listening, posting, responding, and offering more than just promotional pap?  How do they manage their process?