Of Influence and Trust by 1000heads’ @joannejacobs #lul360

by Yann Gourvennec on 26 February, 2012 - 16:42

Joanne Jacobs was presenting today at Lincuplive, a great social media conference put together by our friends Celia, Glenn and Tim and today was a very special day. It was Joanne’s last UK appearance as she is returning to Australia and will be leading the WOMM company 1000 heads down under. Her pitch was about trust and influence and she took the opportunity of this last UK presentation for reinstating quite a few important facts.

[photo by Yann Gourvennec: http://bit.ly/picasayann]

what is really influence about?

Influence has been Joanne’s focus for the past 6 months. There are lots of tools for measuring influence and, some time ago, Joanne realised that she was having a great score on Klout just because she was broadcasting and tricking the systemHowever, all high scores on Kred or Klout (“nothing in social media can be spelt right” she maliciously commented) are based on activities and not influence. “Influence is much more subtle than that, it’s about how your circles perceive you”. And it’s got everything to do with how you are perceived, not how you speak.

don’t treat influencers as celebs

“Following someone doesn’t mean that you trust them” Joanne added. This is the basis for this session. “The worst thing you can do with an influencer is to treat them as a celebrity” Joanne said, because influencers are acknowledged for being independent and they can’t be forced into tweeting something and become a “loudspeaker for a brand”. One has also forgotten that the whole rise of social media was the result of the disappointment with brands and how they were lying to clients.

Trust is the result of performance

“Trust is something which is developed through performance”. A lot of people come to me as a consultant and they ask me how to sell more widgets but social media consultants may not be the most  suited people to do that. Social media – and influencers – can help you with different ways of doing business, co-create for instance, changing the way you do business, but they can’t be used to help you sell stuff. You do need a decent website, Joanne added but if you have a very engaged audience, people will want you to engage on Facebook or Twitter, not your Website, they won’t read your pitches.

If, to an extent, she added “we all lie to each other”, “it’s because we want to project the right image of ourselves”, but there is a limit and this is when you are paid to produce fake comments. “This isn’t influence she concluded, this is malicious commentaries online”.

Original Post: http://visionarymarketing.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/of-influence-and-trust-by-1000heads-joannejacobs-lul360/