We Are the Influencers

There is a lot of talk about influencers recently. Influencer is a noun that means the capacity or power of persons or things to be a compelling force on or produce effects on the actions, behaviors and opinions of others. It sounds like a big responsibility that is held by our nation’s leaders, prominent celebrities, journalists and a handful of others. Assuming these people are the only ones who impact influence is a big mistake. In fact, these people are not even the biggest influencers in your life.

In the online world, influence means authority, trust, authenticity, attention and much more. It determines how people view a source and whether or not they are interested in what that source has to say. Influence is currency on the social web. It is important to businesses, brands and start ups because their future hinges on gaining public trust as well as what others say about them online. A company can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting a rumor that started on a well-read blog. Bad business practices can be unveiled with only a cell phone and YouTube. Ensuring the right people are saying the right things about your business could be the difference between a success and a miserable failure.

Whether you use the Internet to connect with friends, learn more about a topic, pass along a funny e-mails or watch movies and TV shows, you are impacted by influencers. However, they may not be the influencers that may come to mind first.

In the technology world, bloggers and journalists are largely irrelevant outside of their own circles. Instead, online influence lies in the family and friends you talk and write to every day. Influence is less about experience, background and what you know and more about trust.

Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb said the flow of information continues to speed up. Kirkpatrick observed web users are becoming overwhelmed by the amount of available content and can miss or give up on the search for new information. These problems will be best solved by new tools to corral that information and view it in a way that makes sense to you.

Another important factor in this equation is your social circle. Your family and friends become you de facto filter. Since they know you, they know what you will find interesting, what you will dislike and what makes you laugh. This is the essence of influence.

There are a number of influential people online. Likely, you could name a few well know bloggers and Twitter-ers, but if you do not check their blog or Twitter feed daily, are they really influencing what you think? How can they change your behaviors, actions or opinions if you do not read what they write or listen to what they say? If they are not a part of your daily life, they are just added noise.

The real influencers are your family and friends when they share stories with you because they know it will make an impact on you. Consider what happens when you see an email from your best friend or a parent. Most people will automatically open those emails and carefully read every single word – there is no bigger influencer than that!

By: Tim Schigel

Article Source: http://www.directorys.uniquearticles.info

Tim Schigel runs ShareThis, the world’s largest sharing network. ShareThis makes it easy to share ideas and get to the good stuff online. You can find Tim on Twitter at www.twitter.com/schigel or www.twitter.com/sharethis.

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