The idea of being an influential person, whether in your circle of friends/family, or professionally speaking, is something that intrigues most of us. One aspect that has been constantly discussed is influence on social media. But what does it actually mean? And why do we seem to pursuit it? According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, influence is “the power to change or affect someone or something; the power to cause changes without directly forcing them to happen”. In my humble opinion, it is similar to saying that a person has some sort of ‘control’ over someone’s beliefs; which, is the exact definition of what propaganda means. Marketing and PR professionals have been trying to understand how social media influence can be translated into ‘real’ engagement; considering that having great amount of followers, for example, does not necessarily entails being very influential. An interesting an succinct blog post about the topic called Dissecting Influence of Twitter: Understand It to Obtain it discusses the subject in a clear way. Although the author focuses on Twitter, I believe the tips he gives can be applied to any other social media platform out there. He argues that what actually matters when trying to convey your message (being influential), is to focus on a niche group, where you have more chances of having engaged followers/ fans/ friends. Namely, “don’t try to influence everyone” (Zumwalt, 2014).
I believe that our online behavior ties together, generally speaking, with our offline world. We want to be heard, to have our opinions matter, and to have a sense of control. This is the path to Power that rules today’s society, and even though some of us do not care about being influential on and offline, I sincerely think it is a human instinct to try to find ‘the best spot under the sun’, so to speak.
What are your opinions on that? Do you yourself pursuit some sort of online recognition?
References:
Zumwalt, L. (Aug 27, 2014). Social Media Blog. Dissecting Influence of Twitter: Understand It to Obtain it. Retrieved from
http://www.meltwater.com/social-media-blog/influence-on-twitter/
