3 TIPS To Shape Your Influence Strategy

August 26, 2014 by Katie

The root of all positives and negatives that shapes your online awareness strategy. Influence simply is getting someone to think about something in way that he or she wouldn't normally have thought about, or do something he or she wouldn't normally do.. There are many ways to create influence, but those ways are not influence. Rather they are delivery methods of creating influence. The online and social media platforms that you use to get your brand out are not influence, they are simply drivers of your influence strategy.

Influence is not marketing, social media, organizational branding, or public relations. Influence is influence. Simply changing perspective that one would not normally have about a given topic, subject, individual, organization, or whatever.

Perspective: Influence shapes perspective for a call to action. That call to action changes his or her thoughts or gets him or her to do something they wouldn't do. Perhaps, it is something as simple as clicking your website link opposed to others in the search engine, to following your page, to trying out your trial offer and sticking with it after the trial period. Whatever it may be, influence shapes perspective. That perspective can be transferred across a variety of platforms that are commonly associated with marketing, advertising, branding, and public relations. This can be new and old ways of using such platforms. Keep in mind those platforms are simply facilitating the travel or connection of influence from one to another to however many. Influence isn't popularity. Influence is simply influence. With a that in mind, we think of factors that create a greater influence.

Influence. It’s one thing to market, it’s an entirely different thing to influence. Influence is the magic that takes awareness to action. It makes person stop and do something. That something that can involve a positive or negative outcome. This can be seen in your online reputation, ratings, collaborations, sales, following, and many other areas. What shapes your influence?

Relevance

Resonance

Accessible

Reputation

Trust

Significance

These areas can certainly create a different level of influence or perhaps, no influence. However, looking at what they are, why they are relevant, and they can be used to create more effective influence strategy, how we can be influenced, how stakeholders influence us, how competitors influence us and our stakeholders, and so on.

Action. Influence creates action. Here, the action is for you to stop and truly evaluate how you create influence within your own firm. Do you? Do you reluctantly post, share, or distribute something that you hope sticks to get you noticed? How has that worked – probably, hasn’t. Do you truly plan or evaluate how your interaction will make someone stop, and act? I challenge you take something as simple as a 30 minute coffee break and ask yourself how your company creates influence? Specifically, looking at to your influence strategy – whether your actions are thought out and contribute to trust, action, relevance, significance and build or hurt your reputation. What you may find is your own call of action to create more meaningful influence strategies and in the mean time, your actions may increase your own internal and external influence for you, your firm, customers, and really, any other stakeholders that could be impacted by your influence strategy.

Great Read about Influence…

Sheldrake, P. (2013). Measuring of Influence. Measuring What Matters. Retrieved http://www.philipsheldrake.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/CW_JanFeb2013_AMeasureOfInfluence.pdf.

Sheldrake, P. (2011). The Business of Influence. Wiley & Sons.

Copyright Viral Solutions llc © 2014. All Rights Reserved.

by Katie Doseck, Ph.D.

Chief Visionary & Content Mastermind | Viral Solutions LLC

Filed Under: Analytics Tagged With: marketing, social media, strategy, trust