BBC Radio 4′s Alex Krotoski presents Digital Human, a live radio show that explores what the digital world has to offer. In this week’s episode Alex interviewed our CEO, Azeem Azhar, on influence and how the digital era is evolving.
Alex underlines the importance of influence and the way in which we shape and express our opinions. Your voice and opinions can be used to get people to do what you want them to. In the 30 minute interview you can hear extracts from Robert Scoble on influence in the digital spectrum. The idea is that there are two crucial ingredients to influence: credentials and platform.
Scoble explains what influence is in today’s digital era, “If you send a message into the world, do other people take action on it? Do they click “Like” on Facebook, do they share it, retweet it, comment, buy the product or click the link on it?” The question is, “Do you drive action on it and if you do, how much?” In a nutshell Scoble says, “If I can drive 1,000 people to a website and you can only drive 500- I have more influence than you do.”
So, what is the value of this action?
Alex shines a light on the new industry that has sprung up to measure just this, the value behind digital influence. She introduces PeerIndex through CEO Azeem who gives a brief explanation of the general goal, “to help discover the influence that each of us has amongst our friends in the real world.”
Alex asks, “what does that mean, “the influence amongst our friends in the real world and to discover?” Azeem goes on to explain that, “each of our actions are the manifestation of influence.”
“Influence is about a belief as much as it is about an action but if you change my belief, you’ve influenced me and may have persuaded me to take an action.” He puts a more focused perspective on this idea saying, “It hasn’t been visible at a large scale but has been locked in people’s heads – social media is, for the first time giving us a lens into large scale patterns of influence.
Where is the value in knowing your friends are influential if society already has it “locked” in their heads?
Azeem explains that, “we can’t possibly know all of the people who we might meet in a given time, one reason it is useful to know where a person’s influence lies is because it helps you assess quickly who you’re dealing with and what they’re interested in.” A second example is that, “you will be influential in a particular subject and that might make you very relevant for a company or organisation.”
“PeerIndex identifies those who have authority and expertise but are below the radar of the traditional mechanism of finding influencers.”
The online space has, to a degree been “transformed”, but how? Azeem believes that, “everything that’s new is probably old.” “There’s been a phase change: with the way the numbers are changing, the world looks very different. Social media is bringing to the fore those hidden patterns of influence that happen in every day conversations and are helping us identify what we call the magic middle- ordinary people who have a disproportionate ability to be passionate/authentic/engaged in a subject and have their friends listen about it. We can identify the magic middle in social media and start to do interesting things for them.”
Alex asks a good question that many are curious to know the answer to:
“How do you build influence?”
Azeem describes credibility and how people trust you on a particular subject, “A part of it is about the number of people who engage with you and who those people are and who, in turn engages with them.”
“What makes up a PeerIndex?”
There are four basic factors which make up one’s PeerIndex:
- What kind of response did you get from how many people?
- Who were those people?
- On what subject?
- How much effort did you have to put in to get that response?
“What is a response?”
Azeem explains that a response can be an @ mention or a retweet, or a “Like” on Facebook. It all depends on the amount of responses that are generated, who they are from, the topic and the effort that is implemented. “Highly influential people will put in little effort and get big responses from very qualified people.”
In this day and age, as stated by Azeem, digital influence can be said to be “based on popularity”. As is explained by Scoble: influence is dependent on how much drive your actions produce when you deliver something to the world.
Alex concludes that, “Influence may seem to be different now in the digital age but look closely and you’ll find, as Azeem said – anything that looks new is probably old.”
To listen to the interview in full, visit: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01n621l
