Mediaboss Marketing

GUEST AUTHOR BLOG: How social influence marketing is about to change your business by Mark W. Schaefer author of "Return On Influence: The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing."

Source: McGraw-Hill

The latest trend is not being set by advertising executives, creative teams, or marketing wizards. Its emerging from the powerful and passionate voices of consumers, and the companies that are finding and measuring their ability to create buzz.

Influence has been one of the most studied aspects of politics, marketing, sociology, and psychology and yet it has never really been measured in a statistically valid way. Until now.

People creating content on blogs, Facebook and Twitter is an action. Having a link clicked, or a message tweeted, is an effect. Finally, there is something to measure in this field. In fact there are billions of actions and effects to measure and compare every day!

In the online world, the ability to move an idea or opinion through an engaged online network creates influence. To the extent a company can measure content moving through this system, we would be able to quantify one sliver of influence.

And that is historically important. Influence has been democratized.

Some of the biggest and brightest marketers and brands like Disney

Mark W. SchaeferAuthor, "Return On Influence"

Essentially, this is creating an entirely new marketing channel to complement traditional methods. And it's cost-effective too. Early results from case studies show the cost per impression is as good, or better, than paid advertising and it is ORGANIC since it is being generated by people who already love the brands.

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Social Influence Marketing is About to Change Your Business: Author of 'Return On Influence'