Peer Influence Analysis: Using Social Technologies to Identify Your Business's Most Influential Customers

By: Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler

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Synopsis: Within social networks, consumers create 256 billion impressions on one another every year-just by talking about products and services. What are you doing to make these impressions work for you? What are you doing to stop them from working against you? You need to think about individuals as potential sources of marketing influence, both positive and negative. In this chapter, authors Josh Bernoff-coauthor of "Groundswell"-and Ted Schadler lay out a four-step game plan-called IDEA-for energizing your customers: 1) Identify mass influencers, 2) deliver groundswell, social-media-based customer service, 3) empower customers with mobile information, and 4) amplify fan activity. The chapter focuses on the Identify step, explaining how companies should analyze their mass influencers-the less than 14% of adults who account for 80% of all online influence impressions and posts. Using case studies from United Airlines and Ford, you will learn the difference between "mass connectors," who have the most influence in social networks, and "mass mavens," who have the most influence in content channels (such as blogs), and how to work proactively to get them sharing messages that are in line with your strategy. This chapter was originally published as Chapter 3 of Empowered: Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers, and Transform Your Business