Category Archives: Business

Helping your community manager to make money through influencers

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As I understand it what Dr Michael Wu saying in his most recent blog is that using social network analysis (SNA) to find the right influencers to influence target users’ purchasing decisions (bearing in mind the value of the targets’ first online activity around a product as the indicator when to start the persuasion process) relies on the finding the right type of influencer – which is not the one with the most friends as the connection, or with the most discussions around a product, but the one with the most recent discussions about the product: relationship + product discussion + timely = best chance of success.

The Right Content at the Right Time: Influence Analytics 3 by Dr Michael Wu

What this strongly reminds me of is my own blog post (‘Greg is one way to make money out of social media’) about how communities managers can potentially play a role as influencers if done properly:

What I want to say for the benefit of companies trying to see how to make money from using social media in the marketplace is to see your own community manager if you have one, and other partner’s community managers, as influencers in their own right.

I pretty sure I’m not breaking any ethical code by saying that, after all your community manager isn’t just going to start spamming the community with product messages – that wouldn’t work. Quiet the contrary, what I’m talking about is the subtle, patient task of persuading members of a community of the value of a particular offering – which requires both intelligence & integrity.

Now after reading the latest piece from Dr Wu, this suggests to me is two things. Firstly that your community manager using SNA tools for large communities, or their inside knowledge coupled with community anayltics for smaller ones, can ‘lead the charge’ to find these right influencers.

Secondly it suggests that they themselves take on this role indirectly by nurturing debates around certain products, nurturing influencers who command attention, and then helping them reach the right users at the right time.

This avoids them directly playing the role of influencer as such, but does give them the power of delivering this tool as a means of creating revenue which has long been the holy grail of community management.

Practically realizing that tool is a combination of the SNA/analytics, plus consultancy work with the community manager to help deliver this.

How MC Hammer is using social media to monetize his brand

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MC Hammer at the 140 characters conference in NY talks about behaviour, & ups the value of the likes of Twitter for staying in the feedback loop, and monetizing his brand by staying in control of access:

MC Hammer: The behaviours have shifted right now. 140 characters 24 months ago was very trivial some of the conversations..why would you tweet this, why would you tweet that, all those things; and then they started to grasp the understanding of the business implications and how we could effect our customer relations, how we could effect mobilizing an audience – so studying the behaviour..so that’s what excites me right now.

Q: How are you using social media?

MC Hammer: Very strategically. I’m using it to shape behaviour, to stay in the feedback loop, to have a firm understanding of the totality of me as both humanising my brand as a person and the extended relationship between me and my audience…transparency is the key going forward. You as the brand control that access rather than a third person who monetizes seeing you where you are, sending their photographers, taking it and saying wow you are on TMZ.

See the full 15 minute conversation.

PS: Hammer says MySpace is now ‘old school’. He goes on to mention the value of the ‘total stream’ of tweets which give a picture of the business and the personal over many months. And references a recent lunch meeting with a guy from Salesforce.com and musician Neil Young to how to maximise the use of Twitter for artists.

His tip for interacting with people with a negative mindset on Twitter? Use the ‘block’ function. (He gets a round of applause fromthe audience when he says if he wants negativitity for his barnd or business he needs only turn on his TV).

Conversely he highlights people ‘doing good & doing well’ as an under-served market.