SocialFlow Blog
Influence and Results
There is a lot of hype around the notion of “social influence”. While we all like to believe we are important, the truth is, we’re not all experts in everything. Ashton Kutcher makes funny movies, but he’s not better at spotting undervalued baseball talent than, say, Billy Beane.
Does Ashton Kutcher deserve more weight to his opinions on everything, simply because he has many followers? Of course not. Also, perhaps fans of Mr. Beane’s work would trust his recommendations on movies over the more “distributed” Mr. Kutcher. The connection with concepts that personally resonate is what moves the needle.
More directly: people identify with personal preference. A strong indicator of preference is language. A world famous personality could say two distinct things, and you may be much more interested in one topic versus the other based on your connection to it. The language, not merely the person, is the driving factor in engagement. Your audience is busy making subjective choices on what they…