Friday, 22 July 2005
More on Blog Influentials
« Discovering Blog Influentials | Main | Scotty, We Need More Power! »Wow, there's been a lot of great discussion about my recent post Discovering Blog Influentials. It's been discussed by Hether Green at BusinessWeek Online's Blogspotting, Rex Hammock at RexBlog, Dana VanDen Heuvel, Dina Metha at Conversations with Dina, Mitch Ratcliffe at RatcliffeBlog, TSMI's Trade Show Marketing Report, Melanie Isaac, Fritz at Curch SEO, Jason Timmermans at Echo Generation and, of course, by Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion.
I'm anxious to explore this idea further and start discussing exactly how we might go about identifying Influentials. In reading the comments and discussions around this topic, I think it might be equally important to better define Blog Influentials. I see a lot of confusion and false assumptions here - even on my part. But alas, I'm traveling and probably won't have time until next week to really delve.
But in the mean time, I would like to point everyone to a recent post about Influentials on BuzzMetrics' blog. They ask the tough question - "Roper's Influentials are still alive and well - but do they matter?" This is a really interesting question.
Another point I want to explore - Berry & Keller's Influentials are clearly early indicators for coming trends (30 years of research shows this). Is our assumption that Influentials catalyze the trend that follows their early adoption a false one - they might simply be an early indicator because they find new stuff and discover the benefits before the rest of us - but they may not actually influence our adoption. If this is the case "Influentials" might be a misnomer that skews all of our discussions in the wrong direction. More to come on this when I get home.
